Even though I may have cried last week because my students act so atrocious and I hurt my throat yelling at them, I kept telling myself, "Just make it to Tuesday. Because Wednesday won't count too much because you're leaving on Thursday. And Monday flies by so fast so it's really just one day. Just Tuesday. You can do it." And by will and mercy of God, I made it through. I let the hullabaloo of the classroom trail behind me as I hightailed it to Myrtle Beach.
There's nothing quite like going to the beach, is there? I remember during the summers when I was kid, one of my aunts would take me and most of my cousins to Myrtle Beach, or to Florida if we booked early. My best friend Martha always got to go with me because I was the only one who didn't have siblings. She was pretty much a sister/cousin/daughter/niece to everyone anyway so everyone accepted her presence. We rented an astro and left at an ungodly hour so we could sleep the whole way there. My aunt probably planned that to her advantage.
Mama, her Friend, her friend's two girls, Emmi Lou and MK, and I made it to the beach in good timing. I was very apprehensive about having two kids go. Not that I don't like kids (okay, maybe sometimes I don't...but only when they don't have manners or are brats), but I was really nervous that I was going to get stuck babysitting. Sometimes people with kids act like people with dogs, they lose all sort of consideration for others. For example, maybe I don't want you to bring your dog over without asking and then have it chew up the remote. Or maybe you should fence that beast up so it won't come barrelling at me while Bailey and I are taking a neighborhood stroll.
Maybe you shouldn't assume I'll babysit your kids so you can go spend your last $80 on a tattoo to make your soon-to-be ex-husband angry and your also-not-yet-divorced-but-staying-on-the-phone-in-the-hotel-bathroom-until-4-in-the-morning-guy find you to be an attractive, rebellious woman.
You guessed it, I got stuck babysitting. Good thing I'm not resentful about it, eh?
Nah, despite my annoyances with Friend, she does have two pretty great girls and I really didn't mind being with them.
MK, on left, who has beautiful Marsha Brady hair that she did, incidentally, brush about a hundred times a day, was having a few issues that caused her to be a little ill pill. Not only did she have these welts on the bottom of her feet from the pool in their neighborhood, she has started to develop early stages of womanhood. Bless her heart, she whined ("Oh my gaaawwoooddd") and was feeling terrible eighty five percent of the time. At one point during a silly, giggly fifteen percent time, she proudly got up for a minute to model her new pink training bra. With the exception of this newly discovered treasure, every piece of clothing she owns has a peace sign on it. MK doesn't say words, she dances them. It's not, "I'm about to take a shower." It's more like looking in to the mirror saying, "I'm (hip shake) about to take (shimmy shimmy) a shower (pop hips side to side)." She's syllable Beyonce'.
Emme Lou, on right, still has a young, sweet innocence about her. She's easy to get along with and ended up getting pretty attached to me after I rode the log ride with her. (Did I mention I'm terrified of heights and any form of roller coasters??) She makes the best expressions and has this accent that sounds a bit like Eliza Dolittle before Henry Higgins made her proper and boring. Whenever she finds something silly that someone says, she crinkles her nose. If you're laughing at her or making a joke at her expense, she makes this grinning expression as if she can't figure out why she's funny but she's delighted that we fools think she is. I can't articulate enough words to express how great I think this kid is.
Mama, MK, Emmi Lou
Oh, how I love the swings! Even though once I realized we were above a roof I had to close my eyes and grip the chains. My sweaty hands kept sliding off of them.
MK and Emmi are the ballsiest girls I know. MK road the giant roller coaster by herself- twice! 
Mama, I.
Have I mentioned that I have the best mother in the world? No, really.
Whenever I was about to boil this weekend over being thrown in to babysitting and then proceeded to rather harshly tell Friend to put her phone away at dinner (because, well, we were are dinner), Mama gave me a different perspective that made me a much nicer, more humane human. She's always doing that.
Which makes me think, "Geez, I'm such a wretched, grudge bearing, selfish little snot." Guess I'm more like the Y chromosome.
Mama can forgive and love anyone. While leaving the beach we saw this lady trying to pull this older man, maybe her grandfather, up from sitting on his towel. She was having a hard time. So Mama put down her bag and cooler and grabbed the man under his other arm to help lift him up.
On Sunday, after we pulled out of the hotel, we realized about ten minutes later that MK forgot her zebra pillowpet. I was annoyed as usual but said I'd turn around so she could get it. Teeth gritted. Mama got out to see if it had jumped off the luggage carrier while we were coming down the elevator. She was walking, looking down and this woman rounded a curve and ran into her. If it had been me, I would have forced an "I'm sorry" but would have been not-so-discreetly annoyed that she didn't see me. But Mama giggled and smiled and says, "Oh my goodness, are you okay!?"
So I learned a lot of life lessons this weekend. Mainly, Mama stressed how important it was for the girls to have fun that weekend. She went through a divorce with a kid, although I was younger than MK and Emmi Lou and don't remember it. She kept saying that even though Friend was acting kind of erratic, she didn't want that to take away from the girls having a good time and didn't think it was fair for them to be unhappy because they were so aware of their parents issues. Which is overall good parenting advice to married or divorced people, I think.
Mama has a soft spot for kids, especially ones with any sort of broken home situation. She's loving, silly, and joyful: the kind of person that kids like to be around.
So we took the girls under our wings and had a good time and ate too much junk food.
Mama and Emmi Lou
Later when we got home, Mama thanked me for spending time with the girls and for not "going off" on Friend. (She knows how blunt I can get.) She was thanking me? It was one of the best compliments I've ever received because it came from her. And the fact that someone like her might think highly of me is just golden.
I could go on but I know there will be more moments like this in the future to tell you about.
Some other interesting things that we saw:
A big group of church people getting baptized. The Coen brothers weren't directing it which explains the ocean and tie-dye shirts instead of a pond and white gowns.
Emmi Lou got an electric toothbrush and took it EVERYWHERE. Obviously. She used it about six times a day and made a public announcement about it when she headed to the bathroom. I even caught her "brushing" the model's teeth on the cover of a magazine.
This ginger made our door shut because it got stuck. I think he was about 14 and was the strangest mix of confident and awkward.
And lastly, some puppets.
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