A 3 year old Storm hit Montgomery, Tx
The family and I made our way down to Montgomery, Texas a few weeks ago. We stayed with my cousin Rodney and his girlfriend Erin for nearly a week. Our goal was to convince them that they should never, ever for any reason have children. Not that there was any talk of kids. Ethan was only too eager to help prevent that conversation from ever happening, ever. Drew made a beeline to the back room where he holed away to play the XBox, rarely to be seen again. Linda had planned all sorts of fun stuff for us to do together. On the agenda was the NASA museum, the Houston Aquarium and Galveston beach.
We got no sleep at all that first night. Erin kept me up all night goading me into arguments that I wanted no part of. To make it worse, she resorted to cheating to win these arguments using all sorts of nefarious psychology tricks that she learned from this book or that. Rodney and Linda just laughed at us. They didn’t sleep either though so the joke was on them too. Despite all of this, we got around and headed to the NASA museum that next morning. At first I was as eager as a teenager heading out on an adventure, sleep be damned. That lasted until Ethan came running into the room whooping and hollering while running in circles around the room. He desperately wanted to play with Erin’s dog Patches. Patches wasn’t too fond of children especially ones who insist on playing with his toys. He just wouldn’t leave the dog alone. My suggestion to just let him get bit and get it over with was ignored. The poor dog was exiled to the back room until the boy went to bed.
And so our routine was established. We stayed up too late at night only to regret it the next morning as we drove through the depths of the city with headaches. I must have driven through Houston rush hour traffic a dozen times as my passengers gripped handles, seats or each other with white knuckles. Not the boys though, they kept themselves entertained as they always do, annoying each other. We all had a great time. I won’t bore you with a bunch of details about our tourist activities except for a little about the beach. I’m sure that all of you who care have already seen the pictures.
We timed our trip to the beach perfectly. There was a storm in the gulf that hadn’t yet made it to Galveston. This left us with perfect swimming weather, still in the 90’s but not burning hot. Linda and I got a kick out of watching the boys experience the beach for the first time. Drew stripped to his trunks and began his attempts at mastering the waves with a boogie board. Ethan in a rare moment of caution just stared as if trying to understand this strange body of water. He would wade into the water and then hightail it out of there as the waves crashed towards him. By the end of the day we were taking turns dragging him kicking and screaming back to the beach.
The storm hit that night and it rained all the next day. Rodney and I spent the entire day singing and playing music. We had left our dog Sugar with a kind neighbor who offered to feed and shelter her while we were away. Sugar isn’t so fond of the rain. Linda was worried about how she was handling it. I was pretty sure I knew exactly how she was handling it and so we wrote a song about it. I figured everyone needs a corny half blues toon about their dog. So that is how we spent our day. All in all it turned out pretty good. I arranged the tracks we had created once I was home and Rodney synced it up to the videos we recorded.
We had to head home the next day. Both Linda and I were pretty sure that we had definitely worn out our welcome. Of course Rodney and Erin swore they were sad to see us go. They insisted that we should return soon. I’m sure they both let out a big sigh of relief as we drove away. Ethan held up to his part of the bargain that week. I think we just about convinced them that kids were just too much trouble. If Drew hadn’t been so well behaved all week, I think we could have sealed the deal. Linda, the kids and I don’t get to go on adventures like that very often. We sure picked a great place to go this time.