MAPQUEST AND GOOGLE MAPS WERE RIGHT! REASON NUMBER 2,033 TO NOT GO ON A FAMILY VACATION!

Yep, you guessed it is Family Vacation time! And my book club members ask why am I so adamant about not wanting to participate and I usually can say, “Let me count the ways!” Ugh!

This was a busy week for me even though I only worked 3 days, but I worked all three days. Then I would come home and retightened my hair. Go me and yes I am tired! Guess when I packed? Thursday. Wasn’t in a big hurry, because the more I thought about the actual drive from Montgomery to Myrtle Beach I felt an ominous feeling deep within me. I knew I would end up in a vehicle for too damn long and I was.

The plan was to leave at 5:00 am. Yep, I was squeezed in the vehicle with three us one seat, but you will be surprised how much grown folks will curl up when they sleep. Plus, I just couldn’t do Smoky, no matter how much I loved him. Oh, let me also preface this trip with I was up Thursday at 5 am to workout and ran errands and packed until I went to a screening with the book club for the movie The Help. I’ll blog about that experience next week. But when it comes out, make sure you go out and see it. After the movie, which started at 7 pm and ended about 9:30 pm, we went to dinner and I didn’t get home until a quarter to midnight and I had a few things to do before I went to sleep. However, I only slept 30 minutes and just got up. So folks I had no damn sleep so I just knew I would sleep the entire trip. But I didn’t. I guess I only require two hours of sleep. Sighing…We left about 5:20 am and the family trip had begun.

However and hour and 15 minutes later, we were making our first stop. And when we got to Atlanta we made another stop. This is when I noticed it took us an hour and 15 minutes to get to the GA state line, damn it I do it in an hour. And getting to the 285 bypass should have taken no more than 2 hours, but it had taken 2.5 hours. Somebody was driving to0 damn slow for the distance we had to travel. And when we had our second stop we were told we only had 70 miles from Augusta, um someone miscalculated because they left out a whole 279 miles. I was nice and ripe with annoyance and people I was just so damn tired and achy I was ready to get out of the vehicle for good. Really! And the music was not the get you hyped stuff, it was old stuff that I don’t ever remember hearing and it was too slow for driving music, but I tried to keep it together because the driver needed to be comfortable, but damn I fidgeted so much I gave myself a back ache.

When we finally stopped for something to eat, it was at McDonald’s. I do not eat at McDonald’s. I only eat at select fast food establishments because I do not waste calories. And of course we couldn’t just eat and drive, we must eat in. My cousins and I were over the whole thing we just wanted to get to Myrtle Beach. And let’s not forget we were lost which costs us about an hour. I sent an email to my book club members after being in the vehicle over 9 hours letting them know I was still in the car and I was ready to just die.

Then I go to check in for me and my sister, who is only 15 minutes away, they can’t find our reservation and I know damn well they charged my damn credit card. Oh yes, being tired means the angry, frustrated black woman comes out. And after 20 minutes of them looking they find the reservation. Want to know why they couldn’t find the reservation? Because my sister has a hyphenated name. All her fault. Oh and by this time we discover my sister is so damn lost and her GPS is giving her erroneous directions she is ready to just abandon the car especially as she is stuck in traffic. Yeah, she was ill by the time she got here because; she was lost for 2 hours. She knows Myrtle Beach like a native.

We played a good trick on my niece too funny. I wish I had pictures of her stank face.

All wasn’t lost though because we are all here together. Plus, we went to Benjamin Calabash’s seafood buffet and baby we got full! When I say they had so much stuff on their buffet I was dizzy. I literally wanted to turn around in circles in an effort to grasp the enormous amount of items on their buffet. Their crab legs were to die for as well as they clams and mussel bake, shrimp, oysters, oysters Rockefeller and oh their hushpuppies tasted like a sweet, succulent ball of cake. Yummy! It was worth the expensive ticket. Yet, I am walking around feeling fat! And greedy!

So although the day started with it doing the most, it really ended on a high note because dinner was great especially since it was with family.

Reason 1, 029 Why I don't like going on Family Vacations!

There are so many reasons not to go on a family vacation, but I try to keep the loving feeling in the forefront and hop on board to what I hope will be great time with the family. Now, I love my family I really do, but um, sometimes I don’t like being around them for long periods of time and some of my folks I prefer to not be around them at all if possible. My mouth is all I am going to say.


As I have mentioned before, the family is going to Myrtle Beach for this year’s family vacay. I have been trying to work on the itinerary and such, but something or someone always derails me in completing it. Hell, someone pisses me off and I am like forget about it!

On to this particular reason, we are driving to Myrtle Beach. We are driving from Alabama, Georgia or Virginia. Last week I decided to MapQuest and Google map this trek. When I did, I started to hyperventilate. No, I couldn’t breathe properly for a minute or two. Imagine being forced to see on two different map services the time is calculated to be almost 9 hours! Okay, 8 hours and 55 minutes, but that equates to 9 hours. I immediately emailed my sister and she says, “How did you all miscalculate that?” No help from her. So I start examining the maps and I still cannot see this trip taking more than 6.5 hours. I have driven through SC and it only takes 1.5 hours. I don’t get it. But I also know that it is suppose to take a little over two hours to get to Atlanta from here and I can do it in an hour and 55 minutes. Don’t ask. So this has me all discombobulated because I hate road trips with a passion so fully imbedded in my soul, and yes I am being the most dramatic here. I cannot be in a car longer than 5 hours, because after that I become someone else. It isn’t pretty. Now I have to take valium and sleep the entire way.

So not only am I going to be in a vehicle with family I am going to be in there with them for almost 9 hours. Now to the next point, we discussed the travelling arrangements early on. I was going to ride with my cousin and her husband and their son. Then the son decides to bring a girlfriend. Then the son who was flying directly into to Myrtle Beach is now driving to Montgomery and riding. Count the number of passengers for a midsize SUV. Yeah. So now I am thinking reason 1,029 why I don’t like planning vacations with family.

My other cousin is so excited about going and he has already booked his car rental and made plans for me to ride with him, pick up my luggage the day before departure and me driving with him and his wife to Myrtle Beach. He called and told me this last week and I didn’t respond one way or the other because he undoubtedly didn’t get the memo. I love my cousin, I sho do, but I don’t like riding in a vehicle with him and me and his wife are not best friends and his ass smokes. Sisterlock folks, know we don’t play that because the smoke will get trapped in our hair. Homey don’t play that, for real. Furthermore, I will not be handing over my luggage the day before we leave, I am funny about folks going through my luggage and touching my underwear, seriously. I got issues and I don’t trust folks with my stuff and frankly I will not do my final inventory until I go to bed that night, so no way am I going to be separated from my luggage. Seriously, I am allergic to smoke I will not have my luggage or myself smelling like smoke so I can’t breathe the entire trip.  What kind of vacay would that be if I can't breathe?

So now that my travel plans are all upended, I remember why on the last family trip I flew to Orlando. I can’t. My family is too wishy, washy and frankly I don’t like to be aggravated before vacation. If I even go to Myrtle Beach, this will be the last family vacation. I will only be vacationing with my sister from here on out, because we make a decision stick to it and do it. My family on the other end be doing the most. The most to get on my nerves. I told my sister I may not be going on this trip because if I have to ride with smoky the bear cousin, I am done and I will mail my half of the room to her. Her response “Let a sista know something because I am not going to be up there with them either, that defeats the purpose.” Like they ain't her family too!

Happy Belated 4th of July!

I hope you all had a wonderful 4th of July and enjoyed the holiday. I don’t know about where you live, but the weather was nice and hot and with the right number of afternoon showers so the ground wouldn’t be to dry for fireworks.


I enjoyed the weekend doing absolutely nothing and whatever I wanted to do. I didn’t do any creative cooking unless you count the grilled turkey dogs, turkey hamburgers and corn. Yep, low key all the way. So let me give you the rundown.

Friday I spent time working and later working on the family vacation itinerary. My cousin called me to see what was on the agenda since I am now the official “Activity Coordinator”. In my head, I am thinking all I want to do is shop, get my facial and massage and drink wine I ‘ont care what everyone else is doing. Alas, I am still working on the itinerary and hopefully, I’ll be finished this week.

Went to the second job and tried to not get too frustrated, but by the end of the night I was ready to cuss and was fuming, because the kids were making stupid mistakes affecting the customers and then we didn’t have a favorite item and folks were downright ornery about it, even though it was a supplier issue. I was so happy when I was on my way home.

Saturday was up at 5 am to work out and send the guy a have fun text because he and his kids were going on vacation to Virginia Beach and DC. I ran a few errands in preparation for my vacation and made it home by 11 am. I did some things around the house and then I napped before work again. Luckily, Saturday night wasn’t a repeat of Friday night. Easy breezy! Just like I like it.

Sunday was up at 7 to catch Joel Osteen and then outside to grill my few little items. Was done by 10 and I immediately took a bath and since I already planned to wash my hair I got on that. Speaking of hair, I am completely out of SL shampoo and desperately need some reconstructor. I have been waiting patiently on the website to really be up and running, but it is still in the designing stage but you can order products. Let me tell you, it took me 3 days to order the reconstructor. I got issues and I know it but seriously SL products are already expensive, but that doesn’t compare to the shipping and handling charge. They need to do better. My reconstructor costs $10.95, but the shipping was $11.50 and no that isn’t a typo. Seriously, they need to do better and although I needed shampoo, I went to the LIU group and saw where using the Clarifying shampoo was okay with the SL office and frankly spending $10 or more for shampoo is doing the most. If I didn’t need the reconstructor, I probably wouldn’t have purchased it. I love the Green Tea shampoo, but I don’t love the price. Anyway, I washed and used the last of my moisture treatment, don’t ask me when I am going to purchase more, and let my hair air dry. I think my hair was officially dry by midnight. Ugh! Longer hair doesn’t mean easier. Since we were damn near dead on Sunday night at work, I decided to start retightening my hair in the back. Did that for an hour and a half and went home and work two more hours and the back was finished, which is a record for me it takes me 5 hours to do the back of my hair, but I had been doing some spot retightening all week so there weren’t a lot of rotations to do.

Monday got up and started on the front of my hair at 9:30 and took a breakfast break at 10 and finished my hair at about 1:30 pm. All the while watching a Law and Order Marathon. I was so happy! Then I proceeded to roll my hair on flexi rods, no pictures this morning because I was in a hurry and the curls don’t look like they will last longer than today. And Monday consisted of getting ready for the week and resting. And I enjoyed it immensely.

Even though the little heathens of the neighborhood were shooting illegal fireworks, the 4th of July went by with just enough sizzle for me to be happy. So I hope you enjoy your week. I plan to.