Adrienne, Unplugged

I have not been on a dating website for almost five months.  The signs of withdrawal are slowly subsiding.  No longer do I nervously check my inbox with hope/fear at what awaits.  Almost 150 days have gone by since I last went on an awkward first date with someone I had not seen in real life before that day (see Deal with the Devil for my last online date).  I feel like most of the emotional and mental scars from those horrible dates have started to heal.  Although DW still seems to have fallen into that single guy black hole in his near total avoidance of my gaze, when I occasionally see his car or house out of the corner of my eye, I’m no longer torn by the need to know why he stopped talking to me and the urge to hurl eggs, rocks, or bags of dog poo at him.

To further celebrate my unplugged nature, I recently took my own advice from Lonely Planet and decided to combine my love of travel with my love of family, dogs, hiking, and beverages by totally unplugging and joining my uncle and cousins in West Virginia for a long weekend.  Of course, it would turn out to be the hottest weekend of all time and I would be heading to the land of no central air.  But if you’re not going to go big, you might as well go home so I dove into the experience.

First of all, you know it’s a good time if you get to stand outside wearing a headlamp and drinking a beer while dogs run around you, gleeful in their abandon and lack of leash-wearing.  According to the book of Adrienne, it is nearly impossible to wear a headlamp and not have fun.  If you have found yourself in such a situation, you obviously were not with me for the mere act of putting on a headlamp makes me giddy.  Couple that with a slightly humid night with no noise other than the sounds of crickets and my cousins laughing, a few stars poking through the clouds, and a very cold beer and I think you have something close to perfection. 

Secondly, I got to swim with my dog.  Now normally when we go to the cabin, the dogs get to do all the swimming.  But as it was hotter than the hammered down hinges of hell, I broke my rule of letting no human eyes see me in a bathing suit and we all swam with the dogs.  Watching my dog swim is the best.  He loves it.  “Love” is not a strong enough word.  If you looked up the definition of “ecstatic,” it would be a picture of my dog in the water fetching a stick and wagging his soggy tail.  Swimming with him was even better.  I swam out to get the sticks that had gone beyond his reach and he looked almost like he would laugh to see me fetch.  It was also great as my cousin’s dog got to practice saving us whenever any of the humans made the mistake of putting our shoulders below the water.  Note to self, remember that waving your arms and saying “I’m fine, really, fine!” only spurs him on to greater acts of heroism.

Third, I get to be as goofy as I want around these people.  They’re family, so they’re a little nutty themselves and appreciate my special brand of lunacy.  I get to practice my loon calls, make up and sing songs at the top of my lungs about the cooking show I want my uncle to start so that I can meet and marry Paula Deen’s single son (trust me – there’s a well-developed plan there…ok probably not well-developed, but there is a plan), drink well before 5pm, geocache in the mountains and on the side of country roads, sing along to John Denver outside of the 7^th Inning Stretch, wear my hair in pigtails, get entirely too dirty and not care, see my dog chase his friends all throughout the woods, attempt to run myself (nowhere near as fun or pretty but I did it!), eat homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream my cousin made especially for me (even better when served for breakfast), and make blueberry pancakes the size of my face for all my family. 

Unfortunately it’s not the most restful of va-cays as every time the dogs hear something outside, they all start barking.  Plus they love to get up well before 6am.  But most days, it is totally relaxing just to chill.  Not to text or wait for a text.  To let all the news just happen without knowing how each pundit will sell their story.  Cell phones don’t work there.  The TV is mainly used for my cousin to watch John Wayne movies.  There’s even an outhouse from the days when the only running water was the pump outside.  Particularly helpful on the nights when the power goes out and you’ve made good friends with Mr. Daniels or Mr. Walker.

And when it rained, we all took naps.  Even the dogs managed to sleep a bit without getting amped up at all the sounds outside.  I’m pretty sure that the cabin is my dog’s favorite place on earth.  Although there is sometimes more family drama than I’d like, I wouldn’t trade those times for anything.  For there is something to be said about sitting on a porch with your family, laughing so hard about some silly joke that you’re almost afraid you’ll pee, hearing the thwap-thwap sound of your dog’s tail.  While it’s sometimes unbearably sad there as we miss my aunt and remember where she’d sit with her coffee and binoculars to watch the birds, and how she’d roll her eyes and say that my loon impression sounded more like the mating call of the bull moose, and how she is to this day the most organized woman I’ve ever known, being there together, even when there are tears and drama, I can hear her laugh and feel her love.

I’m going to try to make it back up there at least one more time this summer.  Again it will probably be the hottest weekend of all time and I doubt I’ll get much sleep.  But as long as I have my Charlie, the fam, plenty of beverages, and of course my trusty headlamp, the heat and the sleeplessness won’t be all that bad.  Air conditioning and restful nights are overrated when there’s the option of laughing yourself silly, praying for a breeze to come, and pressing a can of Bud Lite with Lime against your forehead.