Chairs from the Curb: Fripp Trip

We got back from the beach over a week ago but had to hit the ground running with our lives so I’ve had precious little time or energy to post anything.

My dear sweet sister-in-law, Gretchen, texted me that enough was enough and it was time to blog again.

Since I received her text while Monte and I were singing our karaoke best of
Prince’s “Raspberry Beret” I couldn’t argue.

Or was it “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia?

Doesn’t matter,

we totally nailed both songs.

But Gretchen had a point.

Time to get back to it.

She even gave me the topic: vacation.

Can you tell she’s a teacher?

We really felt like we left an entirely different weather season for awesome summer temperatures and sunshine once we left the state of Ohio.

It was just the pick-me-up we all needed to start to air out our stinky moldy souls.

On our drive to the beach we made many stops at those truck stop/fast food/convenient store/mall plazas. They are Monte’s favorite.

The girls and I walked out of the bathroom of one such place to this:

I almost didn’t recognize Monte.

The girls did immediately.

Ellie started to walk right back into the bathroom.

Which was not a great environment

if memory properly serves.

I must have shook my head at Monte because a guy who’s name HAD to be Bubba, walked by and said,

“Don’t you worry about it, buy it anyway.

In fact, buy two and give me one!”

His fist may have been raised as he

walked into the men’s restroom.

Monte felt empowered to do just that until he saw the jacket was $69.

So it has now been determined that Monte is more thrifty than he is tacky.

Thank you, Lord.

Later that evening we stopped at our favorite southern chicken restaurant, Zaxby’s.

Ok!

Monte felt we hadn’t made good enough time on the road, so he announced that we would be eating our food in the car.

The girls and I always get the house salad with grilled chicken.

It sounds boring but I assure you it is not.

The crunchy fried onions take it to a whole new salad level.

I asked the lady taking our order if the vinaigrette they served was raspberry and she said it was not.

I found out in the car once we were back on the road
that she was mistaken.

It was very much a raspberry vinaigrette,

which I very much do not like.

I placed the open dressing packet back into the bag as neatly as I could.

On stop 1,473, Monte dropped us off at the front of a very crowded gas station so we could unload all our dinner/snack trash wrappers.

Ellie got stuck with the paper sack that contained my now leaking raspberry vinaigrette packet.

As she walked around the front of the car, the bottom of the paper sack gave way, soaking the front of her shorts and legs with salad dressing.

A full unused packet of dressing fell on the ground next to the car.

I was laughing at Ellie’s mess as McDaniel and I

shoved our stuff into a full trash can.

I started to walk over to pick up the fallen dressing when a woman walked up and said, in a less than grace-filled voice, that my daughter was a mess and I needed to clean her up.

I was going to kindly ask her what possible business it was of hers,

but I was laughing too hard.

Just then, Monte drove off slowly, running over the dropped salad dressing packet causing it to projectile explode like a gun shot.

Sounded like it too.

A LOT like it.

I screamed when I saw it about to happen thinking I could get him to stop.

Monte thought he ran over a kid

or there had been a drive-by

and slammed on the brakes.

The snarky lady just kept on walking, not at all grateful she narrowly missed smelling like raspberry vinaigrette for the rest of the evening.

The girls and I collapsed over the trash can in laughter.

Then we went to clean up Ellie which involved strategic positioning of the hand dryers in the bathroom on her shorts.

There was a limit to what we could do in a gas station bathroom so she remained sticky and smelling like raspberry the rest of the night.

We always stop in Beaufort, South Carolina for lunch and shopping before getting a week’s worth of groceries and pulling onto Fripp Island.

It’s 18 miles to the nearest grocery store from Fripp. We have it down to a science how to buy for the 7-10 people that usually go on our Fripp trips.

This year, Monte decided that he needed a holder to fit onto his prescription sunglasses so he could wear them around his neck until he needed them.

Translation: a necklace so he wouldn’t lose his sunglasses.

He looked all over the stores of Beaufort and only found one purple sunglasses holder. Thus, cementing to all of us that he was indeed looking for a necklace.

He found one at the grocery store.