Retop Redux

Last year we joyfully signed up for a marriage encounter weekend reunion at Red Top Mountain which provided fun activities such as Mia screaming for three hours before bedtime two days in a row, spending several quality family hours together bonding through scream therapy on I-75 due to a road closure, having only a tub of tapioca to eat for dinner the first night with the end of a plastic knife and Aidan and I having to enter our hotel room boot camp style, bellies to the multi-colored carpeting that had begun its life as a solid beige but had morphed into an abstract pattern of different colors for reasons we thought best not to consider. Of course, the sneak attack was our attempt to not wake Mia and it worked well except for the part where we got stuck in the bathroom.

Having not learned our lesson from either last years' excursion to Red Top Mountain or my contracting Lyme disease there 1987, we again eagerly signed up to go again this year. We figured the third time would be the charm.

This time, we shared a cabin with a very patient and very understanding couple and their two children. We did not bring tapioca as that would be tempting the fates. Instead, we brought a bag of chips for the potluck figuring we could easily dole them out should we again get stuck on the road. Given the fact that the other attendees actually cooked family specialties, our contribution could have been considered a tad gauche as the chips were in their original bag, so we carefully snuck them onto the table. I considered finding a kid I didn't know and then giving him a quarter to put the lovely chips on the table but I didn't have a quarter and since his parents were also there, I figured I'd get nailed on this one. Next year, the chips will go into Tupperware and will be presented as the product of my slaving over hot grease to deliver the best kettle cooked chips anywhere in America.

Our first activity included decorating the cabin so all the kids there could trick or treat from cabin to cabin the next day. Because it was raining, an additional element of fun was added. It's not every day that you get to stomp around in mud while trying to not freeze. Now, for the trick or treating, some of the folks in other cabins apparently considered the decoration a matter of contest with huge inflatables, a fully decked out haunted house and more orange lights than you would need to light New York City and half of Sydney, Australia. We went for a post-modern, minimalist look which was clearly not understood and appreciated apprpriately as the words "pitiful" and "did you guys forget your decorations" just seemed to keep coming up. Clearly they were part of the miscreants that skipped school on art appreciation day and could not identify the minimalist genre. Heck, we had some yellow tape from the Dollar Store that clearly warned of the danger of not "turning back now", a 8" bat that made a "genuine bat laughing noise" if you clapped, and approximately three feet of purple lights. Given that purple seems to be the color for the year, we really thought that extra points should have been awarded for that and as our "turning back now" tape didn't quite run the length of the porch, we clearly "did more with less", an admirable accomplishment given the economy. We also provided proof that a "genuine bat laugh" sounds amazingly like Santa Claus which gave our display the educational component that the others sorely lacked.

The second big activity included the kids decorating "blood" cakes made from red velvet mix. The decorations generally included icing that was a bit over one pound for each cake and those gosh awful sprinkles which apparently contain some drug given the universal kid response to seeing them. As everyone knows, the screaming for sprinkles on ice cream, cakes, waffles, pancakes and the occassional meatloaf just cuts across all cultures and continents. The other decorations included some Hersey kisses that looked strikingly like nipples. Perhaps Hersey was going for orange and white but were economizing on their dye. In any event, after all the kids were done and the cakes were placed on one table, it looked like udders of cows staring back at you. Udders with spinkles, but udders nonetheless.

And then we moved on to the renewal of our wedding vows.....