Chapter 29: Summer Fun

2026 to 2027

We spent about a week cleaning up from the remodeling. There was dust on everything, even the ceiling, and everything needed to be wiped down and washed. Dust even got into all the clothing that hadn’t been boxed up and left in the closets, since the closet doors had to be open so the flooring in the closets could be replaced. We were doing wash nonstop for a week, and Custom Clean Dry Cleaning made a small fortune off us when we took all our good clothes over.

The most amusing moment was when we began sorting through the storage boxes we had left at the house. Much of what was in the dressers was stashed in cardboard boxes so that it could be moved out of the bedrooms when they needed to replace the flooring. That was why Riley screamed, “MOM!” when she opened one of the boxes on her bed. Kelly ran in and found that Riley had discovered the box full of the items she normally stored in the nightstand next to her side of the bed. Included were some nighties and several Battery-Operated Boyfriends and other intimate items that mothers normally don’t discuss with their teenage daughters. Kelly grabbed the box and ran from the room with a face so red she could have given Rudolph a run for his money at Christmastime!

To be fair about it, the remodeled house looked great. The carpet in the living room and dining rooms was replaced with a light maple laminate flooring. The original flat panel oak cabinetry was replaced with a matching raised panel light maple package. The original laminate counters were now fused quartz in a whitish marble pattern. Our new appliances were all Energy Star rated and the furnace and air conditioner were high efficiency systems. We even had an automated home backup generator for when we lost power. We tended to lose power whenever we got hurricanes; global warming meant we got more and worse hurricanes.

Once we started moving back in, Kelly and I decided we needed another vacation, a nice family vacation. The kids figured that out when Seamus overheard Kelly and me talking about it. He told Riley, and Riley dragged him into the living room to ask us.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

I looked over at Kelly, who smiled and rolled her eyes. “We haven’t decided yet.”

“Pensacola? We haven’t been to the beach for years!”

Kelly shook her head. “Grammy sold the place, like she is selling her house.”

“Disney World?” said Seamus.

“We were there a few years ago,” I replied.

“I wanted to work on my tan,” groused Riley.

“Hard to get a tan in a burqa,” I replied.

“Very funny, Dad!”

“Give us a chance to work on this,” said Kelly. We decided to do a big vacation during the upcoming spring break, the first week of April.

Riley was looking forward to the start of the school year for a very important reason. This was to be her sophomore year and we were contemplating the remote possibility that we might allow her to date. Her birthday was February 19, so when school started in August, she would be fifteen-and-a-half. We decided that group dates and double dates would be allowed the fall semester, dependent on keeping her grades and her behavior up. We would reexamine this policy in the spring semester and when she turned sixteen. We were to meet all boys ahead of time. Whining and complaining would not help her prospects for changing the rules. She immediately called her buddies and had them come over so they could plan for the upcoming Homecoming Dance. The fact that none of them had boyfriends yet was not considered an issue; it was assumed they would all have boyfriends by the time of the dance.

Grandma sold the house in September, and we had to help her move out before the closing in October. By we I mean me and Dad. Bobbie Joe was up in Philadelphia and couldn’t take time off to help. He did offer to pay for the movers, which we took him up on, but it was still a pain in the tail. Grandma was moving into a one-bedroom apartment at Assentia Acres, an assisted living facility. She had a small kitchen and dinette in the apartment, and if she didn’t want to cook, they had a dining facility on the campus.

Unsurprisingly, Grandma had more stuff in her house than could possibly fit in the apartment. Equally unsurprising was that Grandma couldn’t imagine getting rid of any of it. Dad made the decision to rent a storage unit and put everything into it that couldn’t go into the apartment. “Listen, Grim, your grandmother is running on pure emotion right now. Everything in that house is associated with your grandfather. If she throws it out, it’s like she’s throwing out your grandfather.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon. Still, have you ever heard the definition of a blivet? Ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag.”

“So, we put what won’t fit into the storage unit. This time next year, Mom will be used to her new place and won’t associate the stuff she doesn’t see any longer with Dad. We can do some cleaning then, or the year after,” he replied.

“Or never. We may be doing that ten years from now.”

“Hell, she might outlive the both of us. Let Seamus deal with it then. He deserves the grief.”

Dad and I supervised the movers who packed up everything and moved it. Along the way we kept notes of who was to get what when she passed herself. For instance, when we moved her recliner, she said that Dad should get it. It didn’t matter that he had a perfectly fine recliner of his own, he wrote it down on the notepad. Likewise, when we moved Grandpa’s flag and his medals, she told us I was to get them eventually. I already knew that, but we wrote it down anyway.

At the beginning of November, I took a week off from consulting and did a book tour for Officer Involved. Without question, this was the most controversial book I had written, and I did not enjoy the grief I received. Everybody had an opinion, and intelligence was not a prerequisite. I got large rations of shit from people who had been happy and wonderful when they talked to me about my previous books. None of the opinions had anything to do with reality or fact, and it didn’t matter whether they were liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. I was simply wrong! Simon & Schuster loved it, though, since controversy simply guaranteed better sales. My enjoyment was not a requirement.

We did Thanksgiving in our new kitchen that year, as much so we could show it off as anything else. We had the whole family, too, with Teresa bringing the boys and Bobbie Joe bringing his bunch as well. It was difficult to get everybody together since we now lived all over the country. Still, it was good to get together, and we had a good time.

Kelly and I did some research on a fancy family vacation. We wanted somewhere we could take a pair of teenagers that wouldn’t have them killing us or each other. Riley would be sixteen and Seamus would be twelve-and-eleven-months. One thing that we had in mind was Beaches. We had been to Sandals three times and were on their mailing and email lists. It was a Sandals resort for couples with kids. Sandals was adult couples only and was pretty much explicitly about boffing your partner in an exotic locale. Beaches was more family oriented. There would be no skinny-dipping under the villa. Instead, there would be things like a water park and sports for kids. Some of the activities were for small children and some were for teens.

Our biggest problem was in bedrooms. Some of the resorts only had single bedroom/suite packages, though there might be two beds or foldout couches. Turks and Caicos had suites with more than one bedroom. We dumped it on the kids. “Here’s the choices. We can get a suite with two beds, and you can share a bed,” said Kelly.

“Share a bed? Are you kidding?” exclaimed Riley.

“No way!” said Seamus.

“Option Two is a suite with a separate kids’ room.” I pulled it up on the screen and showed them a small room with bunk beds. “You can dress or change in the bathroom.”

“Isn’t there anything with a third bedroom?” whined Riley.

“Not for a price we’re going to pay,” said her mother. “You want your own bedroom you can move in with your grandparents and we’ll just take Seamus.”

“Really?” asked our son, smiling.

“That’s not fair!”

I shrugged. “Fine by me. You don’t want a vacation, okay by us. That’s it. You share with all of us or you just share with each other. Or you don’t share, and you stay here.”

“Dad!”

Kelly and I weren’t very sympathetic. We left the kids to check out the websites on their own and went off to watch television. We already knew what would happen. They would grumble, Riley more than her brother, and they would agree to share a room. The idea that one of them would stay behind while the other went to the Caribbean was anathema! Riley caved the next morning.

Mom and Dad took Barney while we were gone. That worked out well, since Barney’s main occupation was napping, which matched up with Gomer’s ambitious nature. Gomer was their eleven-year-old basset-beagle mix. My parents promised to walk Barney around the block every day, just like they did with Gomer. Barney and Gomer would sleep the other twenty-three hours of the day. We also borrowed some luggage from my folks. Kelly and I had a five-piece set that nested one piece inside another; with Kelly and I using the largest pieces for us the kids were stuck with the small bags. That wasn’t a problem when they were younger and vacation wear simply meant t-shirts and shorts. Teenagers were a lot pickier. Riley planned to bring enough outfits to necessitate an entire five-piece set all on her own! We limited them to one suitcase each, and they could share our hanging bag for anything fancy.

We flew from Atlanta to Turks and Caicos the first Sunday of April. It was a three-hour flight nonstop, or six hours if we made a stop somewhere in between. There were eighteen flights with one stop and two with no stops. Nonstop ran fifty percent more. Considering what we were already paying for the resort, we went with the less expensive one-stop version. There was a shuttle van from the airport to the resort and we were checked in by midafternoon.

The first thing the kids did once we got into the room was look for their room. It looked even nicer than on the web, done all in mahogany, with a trundle bed under the bottom bunk and a television and game table. Riley immediately threw her suitcase on the bottom bunk and gave Seamus a dirty look, daring him to argue about it. She was immensely disappointed when he just shrugged; she wasn’t aware I had already told him, on pain of death, not to argue about whichever bunk she selected.

“Pro tip, guys. I travel for a living and your mother does some travelling, too. Unpack and hang everything up in the closet and use the dresser. It will make things so much easier. We’ll pack the suitcases together in the back of one of the closets.”

We left them to it and retreated to the main room. It was also done in mahogany, with a huge four-poster bed dominating everything, and with a couple more dressers and several couches and armchairs. We had a small kitchenette area with a microwave and a refrigerator, along with a wine and liquor minibar that had snacks. More importantly, through the patio door was a huge beachfront deck with a table and chair set. I wandered out through the patio door and looked out at the ocean. Kelly followed me and gave me a big hug from behind. “This is beautiful,” she said.