Let’s Go On a Weekend Holiday
7/23/22
I woke up reminded that I had gone to bed uncharacteristically early and sober for a Friday night. I tend to pack a lot of living into my Fridays, perhaps an outgrowth of formerly working on Saturday and Sunday nights. But this week I was focused on getting a solid night of sleep and being all in for a first purposeful daddy/daughter exclusive trip with my five year old Sadie.
After the usual uphill push to get the dog walked on a Saturday morning me and Sadie shoved off for Mille Lacs circa 9:15am. A five-year old has the capacity to plan, to fret, to analyze, to anticipate. So I know I don’t have a captive audience in the back of the Volvo, we have a schedule and snack commitments to keep to to maximize in the water time.
Now I know it’s going to be a rainy day, but honestly, rain doesn’t change plans. It might ruin a planned pool trip, but if this is your day to go up North, then it’s your day to go up North. We start off the day listening to Jessica Paxton doing Teenage Kicks on the Current. As I’m listening to this “Swan Swan H” tune by R.E.M. I am thinking “I am barely generationally connected to this music, what must this feel like to my daughter, a foreign language?”. At this very moment she requests that we listen to “Down by The Water” by the Decemberists. And that means Sadie is really aware, Peter Buck plays guitar on both of those songs. The Decemberists are really into their R.E.M. sound on that tune. I’m elated Sadie is connected musical dots and I’m fine to start playing tunes for her from Tidal.
I lost my picking music steam and we flipped over to KVSC out of St. Cloud which never fails to bring me joy when I flip it on. Pro-gear, pro-attitude, college energy. A dude (Justin?) couldn’t get a technology thing to work this morning and he handled it so well. Made a joke, kept it moving, got it working.
We stopped at a Target near Elk River. My shopping list was a hits list of “where the fuck is this located??” type items: sunblock, bug spray, life jacket and some shoes. We found the stuff but this was one of those bizarro Targets where the grocery stuff is on the left at which point you might as well just “Fuck You Pal It’s Your First Time at Target” sign outside. The guy at the register wore an N-95 and I promptly felt like a jerk for not wearing a mask.
We did a lot of Jojo Siwa in the car. That’s my daughters favorite. But we also rocked the Power Loon. Do you know about the Power Loon? The minute I turned it on it was “Breakdown” by Tom Petty and it was on. Also, I heard a tune I had never heard by Journey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFqXFE8OSG4) called Stone in Love. Well that song is amazing. I also caught a Billy Squier tune called “My Kinda Lover”. I think I had heard that before, but it floored me.
The next stop was the resort where I had bought the last hotel room available which Rachel thought I spent too much money on. Yes, she’s right. It was $250 for one night. It’s also July in Mille Lacs and I’m not camping alone with a five year old, I don’t have those skills yet. And if I was camping, I sure as shit wouldn’t be blogging in air conditioned bliss eating Trader Joe peanut butter pretzel bites. In the end, I’m glad we were at the fancy place. The pool was legit. And the restaurant had two older musicians playing country music quietly. If our $250 King Suite paid for those folks to play some good music, great for me.
We get to the resort and I have to pee with a blinding intensity I only discover as I stand up. That’s the best thing about being in your forties with young kids. You stand up and your body screams “EJECT THIS URINE FROM HOTEL PENIS ASAP” and your life screams “two kids, two car seats, three backpacks, don’t forget the water bottle, you might as well pee your pants bruh”.
We walk into the hotel and of course there isn’t an obvious bathroom. Usually it’s right next to the lobby. Nope. It’s all hotel rooms on the first floor. So I’m just holding it and I’m behind one of the worse archetypes to be behind in a “have-to-piss-so-bad-i’m humming and tapping” situation. . .BROCHURES and QUESTIONS man! I absolutely hated to see it. He was leaning back, asking about fishing prices, check out times, and he was asking about enough dates that it was clear he was just a guy doing research for a trip in the very near future. I considered butting in and asking where the bathroom was, but I just didn’t think anyone would understand the position they were putting me in. When Captain Brochure finally wrapped up he only slid over a little and for a minute I thought I wasn’t going to get served at that moment. The disinterested midday high school-age hotel agent got me to the basement bathroom and also let me know it was kind of rich for me to be trying to check into a room at like 11:44am. Understood sir, I kind of wish I had peed my pants in your lobby.
Umbrella in hand, rain largely under control, Sadie and I made our rounds and I was reminded of the newness of the world to Sadie; “that’s an amazing rock” “these birds are not ordinary” “that waterfall is worth a visit”.
It was time for lunch and the lunch spot was closed at the resort. Good for me, we can drive to Garrison and I can remember the most important cabin of my 20s, Bill Caperton’s parents cabin just outside of Garrison. Ate at the Spotlite Cafe. I got the shrimp basket, Sadie got the French toast. The “you get a salad with your entree” culture is strong up by Mille Lacs. But the salad itself wasn’t.
The head waitress Dan Quayle'd potatoe on the specials board when she updated it for a grilled ham and cheese with choice of potatoe. Potato was spelled properly on the homemade potato salad. Towards the end of our meal together a mother/daughter came in. Mom maybe 40s/50s, daughter late teens/20s. Daughter only had one arm, a thing you notice, but you don’t think about much after that. But, Mom (didn’t catch her name) and Olivia started making small talk with us (the small talk comes easy with a cute kid, especially if you’re a dad, it is still thought of miraculous to see dad’s doing anything resembling parenting in public). Olivia lost her arm in a terrible car accident while in basic training for the Marines in 2016. She made it sound like having formerly been in the Marines is her job now in a sense. They have her on disability, as well the fuck they should, they took her arm. They “retired” her. That’s her words. I don’t know what that means. But that made me think, a woman a generation younger than me, sacrificing more of herself for our country than I ever had. And now she’s pulling down a bacon cheeseburger in Garrison saying that she used to be a Marine. What are the next thirty years like for her? What are the next thirty years like for anyone? Are the Marines compelled to pay her. . .but not compelled to give her meaningful work? I know nothing.
We drive back to the hotel and my mind is full of my memories of Bill’s cabin. I remember almost running out of gas in Kevin’s car one late Friday night on the way up. Playing soccer with a large group of people but primarily just rough housing down at one corner of the field with my ex-girlfriend Anna cause we were so mad at each other about everything. The crazy eagle that had a nest on their property and was loud, violent and truly dangerous. I remember hearing Sparklehorse for the first time out of the speakers of my family’s Dodge Caravan near the river. I remember seeing Martin Devaney get an amazing haircut. I had sex in an igloo shaped floaty on that lake. And “in” is a charitable world. I had sex while also “involved” with an igloo shaped floaty. I lived a lot of life at that cabin, and it’s coming back to me in that beautiful nostalgia-while-in-a-car-and-the-radio-is-on-energy while heading back to our spot.
We get home and book ass to the pool since it isn’t raining. It is still cold outside. The pool water is a good temperature, but my head remains out of the water as I’m trying to make sure Sadie is safe and comfortable and my head is freezing cold. I have to pee frequently and every time I have to pee I have to pull Sadie out of the pool and bring her through a weird waiting area that unexplainably smells like cat dander (why would a public place smell like that?) into an explainably wet mens locker room.
The relatively large hot tub is stuffed with adults in different states of undress (there is one man who I believe never set foot in the tub and was wearing a lined plaid shirt like you’d wear at a pumpkin patch on a crispy mid-October afternoon). The hot tub heroes are tangentially connected to two teenagers looking after maybe 3-4 kids in the pool proper. Also in the mix is two brothers who seem to be in a relentless state of running the length of the pool area before slowing down briefly and then jumping in to the pool. Sadie is floating and smiling, I’m trying to imagine some connection with these other families but I can’t find it. I freeze around teenage girls because I just imagine it must be the biggest drag for them when I start talking. Slowly, some of the big hot tub family starts coming out of the tub and they start congregating around a patio table. These fuckers start smoking cigarettes. I love it and I hate it. It can’t be allowed right? But, it’s basically a rain out, nobody is there to enforce it. And I love the smell of a cigarette. Maybe I’m supposed to hate it on behalf of my daughter who is easily 40 feet away from the offending Marlboro, but I don’t. But I want them to not smoke in front of their kids. But honestly, you aren’t gonna hide it are you? Maybe it’s cigarette o’clock no matter where you are. Around the time they are out of the hot tub, the sun starts to shine, more folks start to show up. I see they are starting to open up the pool bar and I’m feeling good on many counts:
1) the sun will make swimming more enjoyable
2) more people might mean someone for Sadie to play with
3) the pool bar opening means maybe the cigarette fam will stop smoking
But my fascination/anger with the cigarette family goes further than just the cigarettes. They are mostly fat people, I’m a fat person. I’m mad at them for smoking and drinking sugar sodas and wearing lined plaid shirts at a pool because I think it’s a bad look for fat people. I think it makes fat people look like we don’t care about our health at all. But this is 100% unfair. Those people are living their life, they don’t have a duty to represent well for Team Fat. You want to smoke cigarettes and be fat and do it all poolside I should be cheering you on or at least not secret hating you. There’s one dude in particular who seems to have perfected the always smoking thing. I never don’t see a cigarette in his lips. He starts helping the pool bar staff open up the wood window blockings to get the whole snack area open. . .he’s doing this with a cigarette in his mouth. The smoking will continue. Every useless, hateful thing I think about this family, I know someone is thinking about me, and it’d be a better if I could love this family, and if people could love me. It’s hard to get there, but we need to get there.
After some turns in the hot tub and the swimming pool Sadie says she is ready to head back to the hotel room. I try to talk Sadie into a drive out to Bill Caperton’s cabin as I’ve figured he’s actually out here this weekend. Sadie poo-poos the drive and I realize that I need to make the whole day about Sadie (and to be selfish, also about this blog, at some point I realized I better write this one out and I got excited). I also showed Sadie some of Sponge-Bob Square Pants. I’ve never seen the show but she seemed to definitely enjoy it while I read the new J Dilla biography.
We ended up just eating at the now open restaurant at the resort and it was a god damn delight. First off, I ordered one tap Modelo with dinner and they accidentally made two, and I purposefully drank two. There was that two piece group playing who were just a treat. It was an older man playing a Tele Squier, no charts, great harmonies and big fingers that don’t look like guitar player fingers. The woman sang a lot of the lead, played pick bass (didn’t catch the brand) and seemed to constantly adjust to any chord changes that the man tossed in. Shit was classic.
The food was fine and I got recognized by a dude named Doug from Wayzata, loves the Current and wants to check out Jazz88 more. I’ve never gotten less Doug energy off of a Doug in my life. You give me a hundred guesses on Doug’s first name I would’ve guessed Dartagnan before I would’ve tried Doug. I guess sometimes you just name a baby Doug and you hope he grows into being a Doug. No such luck with this one.
After dinner we headed back for more swimming. Sadie loves swimming, I love swimming and it works for us. And boy, the evening crew at pool was top notch. There was three girls who I’m gonna guess were early high school. . .lots of braces, fashion conscious swimsuits, but still breaking out in uncontrollable laughter when certain sets of boys got remotely near them. My favorite duo/trio/quartet was built around a woman named Heidi. I had talked to her earlier and she just screamed out with a vibe of “do I have a story for you!!!”. She was an older, muscular, blond woman who told me it took her a really long to make it to the resort. She met a woman named Noelle who was just, an awesome eavesdrop. She works three jobs. Her man was upstairs playing pull tabs and drinking too much. She had a legit suntan cooked up, a pink swimsuit, some single color tattoos on the back of her neck and her arm and she had the vibe of “I play hard and I work hard and that’s the correct order of importance”. Heidi and Noelle went from “hey what’s your name” to “here’s a photo of my dad who passed six months ago that I’ve been showing everybody” in sub 15 minutes. Noelle’s man won a nice little chunk of change doing pull tabs upstairs so it was a round of drinks for the new trio. It was a Long Island, but if you ask our girl Heidi it was a subpar Long Island. “Have you been to Fletcher’s, now that’s a Long Island”. I got to know Noelle and Heidi up close and personal in the hot tub. Noelle adjusted Sadie’s swim suit cause her nipples were showing. I know maybe one is supposed to have a “don’t fucking touch my kid” thing vibe, but a) I’d been listening to Noelle for going on twenty minutes and I had long ago decided she was a good lady and b) I’d been pulling that fucking swim suit up all day and I didn’t mind the help. The greatest part is when Heidi’s mom steps over and Heidi calls her “Nance”. She doesn’t call her mom, calls her Nance. And she says with the loud authority of someone who has just found their resort soulmate “Nance, this is Noelle” and points her open hand down quickly and then slowly raises it up as if to say “what are the odds I’d meet a real one at this god damn pool?”
I let Sadie swim as long as she wanted. I think a five year old who is somewhat locked into a 2 year old’s sleep schedule is getting shortchanged hours wise. So I was glad to let Sadie stay out there and enjoy herself. It was so great to see her just start talking to people who had no idea who she was or what the fuck she was talking about. Have you seen a five year old in a multi-color life jacket scream “I just did a diving skill!!!” at three utterly disinterested teenage girls???. . .it’s magical.
We made it back to the hotel. I fed Sadie some pretzels and cheese puffs for her last food of the night. We watched the last five minutes of an episode of a Friends on TV before Sadie was thoroughly confused and said she actually did want “kid tv”. Five minutes of TPT later Sadie is going to bed and I’m out here blogging.
This was a special day, I talked to Sadie, I only saw Sadie, I engaged with Sadie, I laughed with Sadie, I bullshitted with Sadie. One honestly doesn’t get that many days that are 100% about just one of their children, but today, that’s what this was, and it was incredible.