A three-day holiday weekend is coming up, which means that anybody who is on a diet will break it to enjoy cookouts with other like-minded people. If you are not one of the millions of people on a diet, you will eat more than usual, and if you’ve broken a diet, what the heck: pretend it’s December.
Those people who go away for the weekend are the most intrepid of all, because after such an excursion, their lives are never the same.
The general routine of a three-day holiday weekend goes something like this:
Since nobody at work got Friday off, except for somebody you think should not ever get a day off because they bum around all day anyway, you can’t start loading the car until you get home. At 7:00. Because of traffic jams on all the freeways starting two hours before your shift ends.
Your car becomes a moving van filled with everything a family needs to pretend they are not on vacation. The kids have outgrown the beachwear you bought a month ago, your tan lines don’t match any outfit you chose for the trip, and the dog has to go to grandma’s because the pet boarders won’t accept him since he managed to hunt down a metropolis of fleas and welcome them onto his torso yesterday (of course you had to lie to grandma about this, or she wouldn’t take him). The vet office is closed.
The kids whine because the gaming console can’t come with you, and because you chose to vacation in a dry beach community, the beer and spritzers have to stay home. The adults pack for six days, and the kids pack as if they’re only leaving home for two hours (besides, they hate the clothes you got them, and they don’t fit), but neither knows this when you finally claw through the piles of stuff in the cabin of your vehicle and head out.
After spending two days’ worth of funds on snacks for the children en route, you reach the destination. The kids immediately want to hit the fun parts of town; you want to flop on the bed and sleep, but first somebody has to prepare the place for the stay, meaning the wife sets up and then drops dead asleep an hour later. She then awakens and finds that the bed won’t support her; neither will the husband, who is missing the cell fiber cushioned deluxe mattress at home with the TV within range.
Meanwhile, grandma calls and says she and the dog are scratching like crazy.
Next morning, continental breakfast doesn’t agree with your vegan daughter or your gluten-free son, and the husband has fully realized that they need to leave town just to grab a beer. The wife forgot her nail file, and an acrylic popped off while she was sleeping. The son wears the same colorless shirt from yesterday and says he forgot to pack anything to replace it. The family ends up having breakfast at a chain that, fortunately, is the same as the one at home, but more expensive.
The wife visits the chain drug store for glue to reattach her acrylic nail, then they go to the local fashion store and nab the best bargain shirt for the son so they can visit a nice restaurant. The daughter runs into some friends from school and goes off to have a vegan barbecue with other, cooler parents.
By the time the weekend is over, the parents are over their spending limit, the kids are distraught because nobody remembered phone chargers, and grandma isn’t on speaking terms with anybody.
Break the diet at home, people. Vacations away from home are for the professionals only.
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