The Summers of Mom and Dad's separation and divorce, dad really tried to step up the family vacations by taking us to Coach Grey's cabin in Maine for a week. A few things stand out about the cabin in particular:
- There was no bathroom, so we had to use an outhouse in which there were a considerable number of pornographic posters.
- We slept in the attic loft, on the ground, in sleeping bags.
- There was no central heating or cooling, or any fans to speak of. It was hot. always hot.
- There were no neighbors, and definitely no neighbors with any kids for us to play with.
- It was directly on a lake that had loons, frogs, and many, many tadpoles.
For the most part, dad and coach grey were not present. They were off at auctions, and god knows what else during the day. And at night, honestly, they were not the most attentive of supervisors. So it's pretty safe to say that for the majority of the week spent at the cabin we were all left to our own devices for entertainment, safety (Ha!), and food. We survived off of Hot Pockets and Luigi's Italian ice. We also spent most of our time catching tadpoles and small frogs and storing them in a yellow, inflatable boat. We would watch them, race them, and then release them in order to replace them with more frogs when we got bored with that set. The boat was roughly the size of a toddler's bed and was constantly full of frogs or tadpoles. We kept ourselves relatively busy trying to sustain our frog livestock in a plastic pool with no greenery and very little freshwater. We were probably responsible for the depletion of the frog population at that lake every summer we were there. As far as actually using the boat for ourselves, we had better options for braving the water. There was a blow-up mattress that we used for wrestling matches and trying to float across the lake (which we never accomplished because it is farther than it looks). It did not go particularly well for us. But we were never told not to use the mattress as a boat, so what did we care.
We also spent every morning watching approximately six hours of television. From The Price is Right to Wheel of Fortune to 7th Heaven, only leaving the comfort of the living room when the afternoon soaps came on the one channel that we could get on the tv from the 80s. And we could only watch the 1950s horror films that coach grey had so many times before we were bored with those as well.
We did bring reading material with us to the cabin. But it only takes a Rose kid about a day and a half to read through an entire Harry Potter book, and we usually severely underestimated the free time we would have. One year I thought ahead enough to bring some extra reading. Unfortunately I chose Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames as my alternative reading material. I do not recommend that book to adults, much less small children who are away from family and home for a week in the woods. Suffice it to say I regretted that choice of book, but I did not have anything else to read and so I finished the book and just had nightmares about it well into my 20s. Good thing there weren't any responsible adults present to question my book choices.
The one time we did have some fun activities to do was when Jesse and Uncle Rich and cousin Jackie came to visit. In an attempt to lure them back to the cabin in the future trips, dad planned to actually do some fun things with us in Maine. That year we went whale watching, which was cold, wet, and for some of us, full of vomit. But also, pretty dang awesome as we did get to see some whales up close. We also went to get ice cream and hotdogs at a local joint - a real treat. And we went driving around "moose watching" which was just dad's way of trying to pretend like he planned an activity while just bullshitting us and getting lost in the back roads of Maine. But don't worry, we were "looking for Moose."
