Linguinis Take Their Show On the Road

The Linguinis wish you all a Merry Christmas and, if we can’t manage to post in the next week, a Happy New Year.

The Linguini extended household will be testing the limits of Blogger next week when it travels to that beautiful vacation spot: Scranton, Pennsylvania! (insert cheesy game show music)

Why Scranton?

Why not Scranton?

It’s not the location that is important, see? It’s a road trip and this is what we do. We think up some thin excuse to go somewhere (this time it’s “skiing,” even though only Heir 2, John Boy, and Dark Garden’s twin progeny actually ski or snowboard). Then we so over-complicate the plans that the trip cannot hope to be pulled off without a hitch. Seeing as there are nine of us, the potential for disaster is almost guaranteed.

It’s what we aim for.

This means we will spend approximately 75 percent of the time trying to decide where to go for dinner. No one will commit to one place because no one wants to get blamed for picking a lousy restaurant. Finally, Dirtman will pick up the phone and make reservations to prevent the children from starving to death.

The other 25 percent of the time will be spent deciding who goes in what car with whom and where they are going and when they will be back.

At some point during the trip the following is guaranteed to occur:

• Heir 2 and the Progeny (sounds like a 60s doo-wop group) will never be seen a part from each other. They will travel as one entity like Vega in the first Star Trek movie. They will answer in unison and move in tandem. They will spontaneously burst into laughter at seemingly mundane occurrences. We suspect they are plotting something, but until we can prove it…

• Sisiggy will drag Dirtman to every knitting and fabric store within a 30-mile radius. She will make a modest purchase and then spend the rest of the trip lamenting the really cool stuff she should have gotten. Dirtman will assure her they will return to Scranton someday and she can buy it then.
• Heir 1 will lament that he is old enough to stay home alone and doesn’t need to be dragged on these lame trips with his parents and uncles. Hasn’t he proven himself trustworthy? Has he ever given us cause to not trust him? Doesn’t he deserve to do what he wants after slaving away at school all week for the sake of his parents? And, if he does have to be dragged on these trips, doesn’t he deserve some sort of compensatory gift, say, a stereo or something? His parents will resist the urge to pummel him into the ground.
• Sisiggy will buy an antique. Dark Garden will find innovative and heretofore unknown uses for the antique. The antique will become the subject of e-mails for a week following the road trip.
• John Boy will drag everyone but Sisiggy on a hike, assuring them that it’s “easy.” When they are all clinging to the side of a mountain, he will assure them that it is “just a slight slope.” As they enter the second day on the trail, he will assure them that the end is just ahead. At the end he will somehow hypnotize them into thinking it never happened so that they will keep going on hikes with him. Only Sisiggy is resistant because this has only happened to her once and she knows to make her own plans on Sucker Hiking Day.
• There will be 10 minutes of skiing. It will require 40 hours of discussion and planning.
• We will do this over and over as we have in years past and will in years to come.

So, if you are from Scranton let me say ahead of time: We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to do it. We won’t do it again. We’ll pay for it. We promise not to come back.