Wasting Away Again in Margaritaville

Yesterday, we all had a huge belly laugh at Danielle's expense.

First, there's a bit of back story to this tale.

My wife and I collect and enjoy wine. Although I don't claim to be much of a connoisseur, we do have quite a collection of inexpensive wines.  Most of my family and friends enjoy a tipple now and again, though we generally confine most of our drinking to camping trips so we won't have any reason to drive anywhere.

Being fans of Jimmy Buffet, his tunes, It's Five O'Clock Somewhere and Margaritaville, have been played many, many times at our house.

And of course, when we go camping, the phrase, "It's five o'clock somewhere," is frequently uttered when it comes time to pop open an adult beverage.

So yesterday afternoon, right after Danielle came home from school, she made a reference to five o'clock.  She was referring to the time of an appointment we had that afternoon.

"I bet you wish it was five o'clock," she said.

She was referring to our appointment, but I made a joke.  "It's always five o'clock somewhere," I teased.

"It's probably five o'clock in Margaritaville," she replied.

"It's always five o'clock in Margaritaville," I laughed.

Danielle's eyes flew open in surprise.  "The time doesn't change Margaritaville?" she asked, completely serious.

"Of course not," I answered. "The clocks never change there."

I didn't think Danielle's eyes could have gotten any wider, but then they seemed to pop out of her head just a little bit more.  "Really?" she questioned.

I started to snicker.  "Your realize that Margaritaville is an imaginary place, right?"

Danielle's expression of surprise was classic. "It is?"

"Yeah, it's a made-up place in a song," I laughed.  By this point I could hardly breathe.

Danielle started to laugh, too.  "Oh boy, now I feel stupid!" she exclaimed.

"Why's that?" I guffawed.

"Well I've been asking all my friends at school where Margaritaville is, because I want to go there for vacation, and they've all looked at me like I was crazy!"

FosterEema and I both burst into another round of uncontrollable laughter.

"It sounded like a really nice place," Danielle insisted.

"That it does," I laughed.

Is Everything Okay?

I haven't posted since September 1, and a number of nice people left me comments asking why I haven't posted, and if everything is okay here at chez FosterAbba.

Yes, everything is okay.

I haven't written because we've had a lot of things happen over the past week and and a bit that I am still pondering.  The big question is just how much I should say publicly.

Some of it is good, some not-so-good, and some indifferent.  Part of my absence has to do with work, part has to do with Danielle, and part has to do with other stuff that has nothing to do with anything, but manage to quite handily get in the way of blogging anyway.

So I apologize for disappearing for more than a week without any warning.  I hadn't intended to be absent for so long.

My big struggle, which has been evolving for quite some time, is how much I should disclose here in the public blog.  It's clear that a certain subset of my readers are intent in doing me and my family some harm, and they seem to take delight in interpreting everything I say as evidence that my wife and I are abusive parents.  I've had enough people send me private e-mails and comments (which I have not published) saying that if they knew where I lived, they would turn me into the authorities in the hopes that the child welfare authorities would take our kid away, or that we'd be arrested for child abuse.

Of course it's kind of hard to have us arrested for child abuse when we haven't committed any abuse, but I guess that doesn't matter in the minds of certain people.

So that's largely why I haven't written much.

I'm trying to catch up on all my blogs, and while I was doing so, I noticed Kari's post Those Convinced Against Their Will...  Her post made me think of a recent camping trip, where we encountered an unusually obnoxious couple, accompanied by a large crowd in attendance to celebrate their wedding.  The happy couple had been together for quite some time, had several young children together, and spent several days drinking, and partying in a nearby campsite.

The group consumed enormous amounts of alcohol.  The bride-to-be (who appeared to be pregnant, though we were later told she still had her baby-belly from an earlier birth) became incredibly intoxicated.  She drank to the point of falling down, and on the day of her wedding she had a huge black eye and bruises all up and down her legs.  She had fallen several times, colliding with a picnic bench and the ground.  Her male companions took delight in yelling curses, loudly extolling their past sexual behaviors in intimate detail, and urinating all over their campsite.  One gentleman (and I use the term loosely) opted to relieve himself into the fire.  Another, made a habit of using the space behind their trailer as a toilet, and he was observed on a number of occasions to be relieving himself in broad daylight.  He was witnessed by my mother, my kid, my friend, and myself.

Sick.

At one point, after the campground staff had asked them several times to cease using the campsite as a toilet, my mother marched over and angrily gave them a piece of her mind.  They responded by calling her a rash of ugly names and stated that she was some type of sexual deviant for watching.

It was hard not to notice, considering their impromptu outdoor latrine could be easily spotted from our trailer's dinette window.

Later, the now-bride came over to apologize for the conduct of her husband's guests.

There's just something fundamentally wrong with a relationship when a bride has to apologize for the behavior of her new husband.  She claimed that he and his guests had simply not been "properly socialized" when they were children, which was why they behaved this way as adults.

Worse, the couple's two young children were present for the entire shebang.  Granted, they were very young and probably slept through most of the antics, but I can't help but think about these children.  Given how much their mother was drinking, I had to wonder if the children had FASD.

In her post, Kari wrote:

I didn't approach the pregnant woman who was drinking alcohol in a public setting because I have slowly come to understand the wisdom in an old saying. Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

Indeed.