My Summer Vacation

My Summer Vacation

By Rachel Donovan

Grade 13

I had only been in Texas for about 20 minutes when I stopped to let the dogs out to exercise their legs and go pee. The air was warm and damp and as I opened the back door of my SUV, I was swarmed by mosquitoes and bitten 4 times as I tried to get untwisted from the dog leashes as they headed in different directions. Not a good sign of things to come for a 2 ½ week stay in Texas. The drive took 14 hours and it was good to see my Aunts house already occupied by my sister. Every morning was an exercise in futility as we pulled different muscles trying to gracefully roll out of the air mattresses set up on the floor. Peg sometimes shared her “nest” with Thunder who always got way more room than Peg did. He would start out in the corner but within a few hours had taken over the bed. Those were some good sleeping days for him. Often when we would come back inside during the day, he would be in the nest relaxing!

We spent the first week taking back the house and the grounds from the critters and getting the house presentable with long sweat soaked work days in 90+ humid temperatures and a heat index of 100. Several times I was able to totally prank Peg like dad used to prank mom, pulling her landscape cloth away when she was trying to line it up or spraying her with the hose when she wasn’t looking. Several times, Peg was able to make me jump just by walking up behind me while I was concentrating on my work, which also made her jump and us both laugh. Valentine would find different ways to undo the work we were doing by digging holes in the freshly laid dirt while hunting for lizards or sneaking out of the closed gates and visiting neighbors. She is truly an escape artist and bungee cords are my friends for life.

We both had different injuries as the other tried unsuccessfully to hold back the laughter. Peg’s as she scraped off her new toenail polish slipping on the wet concrete I had just cleaned off and me as I dropped the small sledge hammer on my foot and the crow bar on my shin that we were using to put up our “For Sale” sign with car sale flag banners. When I looked over at Peg to explain why I was yelping in pain, I could see her visibly trying to hold back the laughter as she listened and tried unsuccessfully to act concerned. We ended up with numerous bruises, blisters, bites and calluses along with who knows how much dirt/bugs were ingested from an open mouth while working hard. I know I ate my share!!

We had lots of exciting adventures like when we loaded the tractor onto the trailer to take it for repair and Peg took a long ride up the ramps, or we took adventure routes listening to Garmin and ended up at a gas station 40 miles away instead of the landscape place 10 minutes away to pick up rock. Or, when we were showing the house and pointing out the beautiful scenery view, Thunder decided to go poop right in line with the view. There was excellent food on the days we went out to eat and visible relief when we got the sewers unplugged and won the war with the wasps and rolly poly bugs. I would like to express my appreciation to George Foreman, Black Flag, and Roto Rooter for making our visit comfortable. Peg would have preferred a kinder, gentler spray for the bugs but I had no qualms at all about killing as many pests as I could in a single, lightening swift spray of the can.

I never thought I could be sore in sooooo many places at the same time but being so tired at the end of the day made the sleep sweet. We started each day with coffee and aspirins! And, we were surprised at all the idioms of mom’s we ended up using like, “I’m coming alive,” or, “This is the best meal I’ve ever had!” or, “What big orangutan screwed this on?” We realized how we had been callous as kids laughing at the pain age brings with it. All in all, we were able to fix as many things as broke when we used them and leave the house far better than we found it. From the beginning of this trip, I prayed daily for courage, wisdom and understanding – in that order, and God really delivered! We took on more than we thought possible and succeeded far beyond our expectations, met some great folks, businesses and restaurants and had many more good days than bad.

We are planning our next vacation adventure now and that is my summer vacation story.