Back in the saddle

We're back from our summer vacation, which I didn't mention beforehand because if I did, my mother would have been convinced that either someone would break into our house while we were gone, or we would have internet stalkers following us at the beach. So instead you got a week's worth of silence just after I posted about how depressed I was about Liza's progress ... in retrospect, maybe not such good planning on my part.

We've been looking forward to this vacation all summer, watching with poorly disguised envy as all of our friends made their beach trips during the traditional summer months. The last two weeks before the trip were especially hard, as I started losing sleep while mentally packing the suitcase and the car, and Jason became incrementally more excited until he was practically giddy the night before we left. Liza, meanwhile, picked up on the change in the air, and starting clinging to me like a limpet. Have you ever tried to pack for a trip with 25 pounds of kid velcroed to both of your legs? I wouldn't recommend it.

As with all long-awaited events, our vacation exceeded some expectations and fell short on others. Liza and I both came down with colds the day before we left, so we spent the better part of the week draining fluids from various orifices, and I spent most of one day on the couch. However, weeks at the beach are supposed to involve lots of laying around getting nothing done, so I managed to read two books while I convalesced, and Jason and my parents took up the slack on dealing with my snot-nosed child. We were able to meet up with more relatives than I expected, and Liza absolutely adored the beach, to the point where she kept saying "Beeeeee??" on the way home yesterday, hoping we were just taking the 12-hour long way to get to the beach down the street from our cottage. No, sweetie, you'll have to wait until next year to see the beach again.

The beach we visited - Cape May Point, New Jersey - is the same place we used to vacation when I was a child, and we actually rented the same cottage that we used to rent back then. Here's what I looked like the first time we went to Cape May Point:

That handsome devil to my left is my cousin Doug, with whose family we shared the cottage. This has absolutely nothing to do with our recent trip - I just wanted to post a picture of me at the beach actually looking good in a two-piece bathing suit :)

Things in Cape May Point haven't changed much in the past 25 years ... but they've also changed a whole lot. The house itself still has the claw-foot bathtub, the outdoor shower, the cactus hiding in the front lawn. Heck, the house still smells exactly the same way I remember it - a little musty, a little mildewed, a little salty, a little like suntan lotion and Solarcaine. You can still walk to the beach, bike to the lighthouse, and drive to Cape May to see the Victorian houses. But the real estate boom has definitely hit the area, with lots of the rustic old cottages being knocked down and replaced by ultra-slick new beach houses. I don't begrudge anyone these nicer places - heck, if we could afford to, we'd love to rent one. But it's weird that houses in the place where I spent part of my childhood now sell for $600,000, only to be knocked down and rebuilt. Places that are up to today's standards sell for $1 million or more. Even with a rental income of more than $30,000 from the house (as advertised in one of the sale fliers), you'd barely be able to pay for the mortgage on a place like that, never mind the insurance costs on a place a block from the Atlantic Ocean, and the upkeep in tax-happy New Jersey.

We shared the cottage with my parents, but unlike previous vacations, it was a little easier to avoid falling into some of the same routines that used to annoy all of us when I was younger. I don't think my mother and I ended up sniping at each other even once, whereas during previous vacations the tensions could last for days. I'd like to think this was possible because we've both mellowed somewhat, thanks in no small part to pharmaceutical assistance, and we were moth more concerned with keeping Liza happy than with getting our own ways.

Well, I've got a ton more stuff to talk about, but the mountain of laundry is calling me, so I'll have to drag this out over several days. For now, I'll leave you with a family portrait:

And the fact that when we were leaving the beach, the gas price in New Jersey was $1.98 a gallon. In Delaware, it was $2.58. Guess there are some benefits to living in the Garden State!