a little before and after…

As Isemingers, we’re generally prepared to get screwed at every turn… tax season is no exception.  Our refund was slashed significantly because this year, our store has more IOU’s than it did at the end of 2015, the IRS calls this “profit” – fuckers.  Anyway, no fighting it… I try not to get too fired up… (hahaha me “trying not to get too fired up” – what a crock….).

But the point of all this is… we didn’t get a ton of money back so instead of spending it frivolously – we decided to invest it.  Here’s a picture of our investment:

We are hoping to parlay our meager return into hours and hours of family bonding.  Yep… the 5I’s are hittin’ the open waters…  Well, we’re actually hitting a lake for the first few outings and then we’ll move on to the river but damn it – we’re gonna be a kayak-loving family come hell or high water…  ok, if there’s high water I’m not doin’ it but there’s nothing else that’ll keep me away… the bugs, the bugs might very well keep me away but that’s it – high water and bugs.

The decision to invest in kayaks was made swiftly and with conviction.  After 3 weeks of mulling it over we said, “meh, I guess we might as well get them.”  I verified our budget and we found kayaks at Dunhams that fit with relative ease.  This… should’ve been the first red flag….

Who knew paddles were not included??  This, to me, is akin to baggage charges on a flight – just give it to me and add the shit to the ticket price… stick it to me blindly.  Although there is something to be said for the challenge of trying to fit everything into a single carry-on bag…

Ok… so paddles weren’t outlandishly expensive; they didn’t exactly break the budget. That honor was saved for the life vests.  And it would’ve ended there… had we happened to own any sort of mode of transport whatsoever.

Three kids seemed like such a good idea at the time…

Even with 2 cars – carrying 3 kayaks on one vehicle is not an easy, common thing to do.  Enter a trailer.

You price trailers lately???  We did some very quick, preliminary research (no, our 3 weeks of mulling over the kayak purchase did NOT include “how the hell are we getting them where we’re going”) and decided we’d rent a trailer for the purchasing adventure and first outing (had to schedule tightly – 24 hour rental, ya know).

Dan took care of the trailer rental and once I finished up my work day the 5I’s loaded up and headed to Altoona to kill our tax return on potential family memories.

Because the price of the kayaks required a coupon that stated “one per customer” I did some coupon printing and some cash withdrawing – 5 people, 5 coupons, 5 wads of cash.  The trip to Altoona was spent handing out the coupons, handing out the money ($200.34 in exact change) and explaining our plan of attack because nothing in my life is ever as easy as just walking in and buying 5 separate kayaks.

I had a plan and Dan was on call at the hospital- we’d be home lickity split…

only….

we’re the Isemingers….

While Dan was taking care of the rental, he saw a fun kayak – not at Dunhams, not covered by any coupon, not part of the plan.  Here we go….. a simple plan foiled by Dan’s indecision – welcome to the last 22 years of my life.  A 10 minute trip turned into 65 while we (HE) compared models, prices, coupons, colors……………………………………………………………………

The kids tend to get restless during Dan’s bouts of indecision.  They started to bicker a little, then one of them was humming a different song than the store radio was playing, Abby wasn’t handling her paddle well… basically, I bided my time and saved my sanity by wandering over to the life vest section – inspecting the PFDs hoping to find hidden areas that would accommodate the weights I was planning to sew into them…

Decisions were made, life vests were sized, paddles were dropped… (Dan pulled one off the hanger and 7 followed – good thing we’re all fairly athletic – paddles were flailing about….) and then we hit the register.  I told Abby to lay her coupon on the counter and to have her money ready – the guy at the register (who’d had just about enough of the 5I’s) scanned the kayak skew and said, “hmmm, no coupon needed; they’re ringing up at $189.99 without it.”  This meant I had to round up the money I had handed out (and Dan… he had wandered off) – by this point I was irritated, sweating profusely and wishing I had followed Lorena Bobbitt’s lead – not to mention, the thought of investing the money in a kegerator seemed wholly more appealing than this cluster fuck.

The register guy was noticeably over it all by the time I handed him the cash then asked if I could use my ATM card for the rest…  his eyes said, “lady I don’t give 2 fucks how you pay for all of this… just do it already”.  We paid then headed out the door to pick up our trailer-full of family fun. Except… during our 75 minute (with check-out) “quick shopping excursion” the parking lot filled up and Dan, is a trailer-pulling novice.  He did a great job getting out of the tighter’n hell parking lot but not without schloads of anxiety and swearing (that was me… Dan was cool as a cucumber).

We found the loading dock, got the boats ratchet-strapped onto the trailer and set off for home.  Dan said, “the guy that took care of us seemed so irritated at first but he was really nice during that loading…  probably just glad we were gettin’ the hell outta his store…” I cocked my head and said, “could be, but I’d be more inclined to believe it was him being up on the dock and me standing down below with this shirt on…” then, with my eyes, I led his eyes to my low cut shirt… Dan decided I was probably on to something.

It’s now Sunday morning… 4I’s are at headed to church, I’m headed for a bike ride and the kayaks are waiting for us on the trailer.  The calm before the storm.  We are meeting my rowing trainer (Trish and her fiancé Wayne) at 1:00 at Shawnee – the rest of this story is but 3 and 1/2 hours away……

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Well, we’re all sitting here on the couch – exhausted and sun burned (ok… I’m the only one ‘got sun burned… what the hell is that????)

Since the kayaks were already hitched up – there was no stress on the ride to the lake – see how happy we were:

We took some pictures for posterity – yes, it’s irritating but at least I’m not taking pictures of my Thanksgiving spread or snow falling…

Look at us… excited, anxious, ready to paddle our asses off.

Trish went first, then me.  Alex then Abby were next.  At this point I was being pulled by my many different personalities – my competitive, driven personality wanted to get moving (I was there to train and had an entirely different schedule for the kayaking than the others); my maternal personality wanted to make sure all of my kids were ok; my menopausal, bitch personality wanted to stick around in the hopes of finding a reason to yell at Dan… Alas, maternal, nurturing Karen won out – I stayed put while Cal was being pushed in…

Let me preference this with a little reminder about Dan seeing a kayak at the trailer rental place…  He was hell bent on buying a boat from that place, just couldn’t get them all at Dunhams, couldn’t follow the plan (for all of you people out there who just KNOW I’m the pants-wearer… Dan wanted to buy a different kayak from a different place… so we bought a different kayak from a different place) my objections were quickly quashed (alliteration baby).  The different kayak was a ‘sit-on’ vs. a ‘sit-in’ (pretty self-explanatory).  Cal got the sit-on kayak…

Cal did not sit.on. the kayak for very long.

…dumped it almost immediately.

By the look on his face and the haste with which he got himself out of the water – I’d say that shit was frigid.  Dan suggested taking him home – my boy is tough, he changed his sweatshirt (and chose a different kayak) and got right back in the water.  Dan was stuck with his “better” kayak (btw, we returned it with the rented trailer).

I took off for some training while the other kayakers… well, hell, I have no idea what they were doing… I think they just basically followed me at a more leisurely pace.  After about a mile and a half of training we all met up…  We floated around and chatted and just basically enjoyed our time together.  A nice family outing…

except….

for the woman in the red shirt.  This woman, standing along the shoreline, was screaming, and I mean – guttural screaming at somebody and let me tell ya… she impressed both me and Trish.  Listen, Trish and I know some swear words and we certainly aren’t shy about dropping the F-bomb… but this woman…. this woman took it to a whole new level – 20 yards from an – obviously – popular playground.  We were 1/2 mile from her and could hear her…

My kids were dumbfounded.  Alex actually looked at me and said, “Wow mom, you get pretty mad but even you don’t act like that…”  A) nice…… and B) I have… actually acted like that – what can I say? Dan and I bring out the best in each other :/  Wayne and Dan enjoyed a chuckle as we women tried to explain how a man can bring you to this…  never in public though… never.in.public.  Grit your teeth, squeeze your fist til you bleed… whatever ya gotta do – keep it outta the public eye….

There is no description, no wording, no amount of blogging that will adequately portray the scene that unfolded with that woman in the red shirt… just know – it really capped off our family outing.

We paddled around, talked, sunned, relaxed and just enjoyed each other – it was a great day.

Poor Abs got tired – she’s strong as a damned ox but that’s a lot of paddling for little 10-year old arms.  We decided to call it a day (not to mention – our 24 hour rental period for the trailer was slowly fading away).  We headed back to the ramp.

For you non-kayakers – you kinda hafta build up momentum to push yourself up the ramp enough to be able to disembark without getting your feet wet…  Alex tore up that ramp like a champ then hopped out and started to pull her kayak out.  Cal followed her…

Dan was behind me, still on the water, when he said, “there goes Cal gettin’ a full head of steam, good lord he’s gonna completely take out that woman standing there….”  such an observant, involved dad… “uh, ‘that woman’ is your daughter.”  Alex pulled all of us out – my work here is done people… Alex is now in charge.

We got our 5 kayaks loaded and helped a little with Trish’s and Wayne’s kayaks and we called it a day.  A glorious, beautiful, wonderful day.

We’ve spent a lot of money, on a lot of stupid shit in our day (Ronco Rotisserie, anybody?) but I think… I hope… this was some well spent moola.

I love the exhaustion I’m feeling right now – from biking then rowing… hard; without sounding too asshole-ish, I’m proud of myself.  I loved hanging out with great friends, we never want for conversation and laughter with Trish and Wayne. I loved watching Alex and Abby float together.  I loved that Cal got right back in the water (we didn’t even have to talk him into it, he dried himself off as best he could and got right back at it).  And I love, love, loved being a family, today; we genuinely enjoy being together but we sometimes forget to make it happen…

I screw up a lot of shit as a mom but I’m pretty sure I nailed this one…