The B-List: LIKE CAMPING, ONLY CROWDED

Since you're reading this, you'll surmise that I survived the Fourth of July weekend at the Grandbuggles' lake house. Better known in my internal dialogue as Place Of 1,000 Ways My Children Might Die, Or Simply Make Me Miserable.

Here's a tally of the most notable happenings:

• I wore a swimsuit. Not as underwear, which is routine for me at the beach - but without camouflage. And not just any swimsuit, but the one Bugglehubby bought me for our Caribbean vacation (where NO ONE knew me). Apparently my butt has grown since last September. I couldn't manage to tug the thing down over my cheeks without showing cleavage. Isn't that "in," these days?
  
• Buggleboy slept soundly in the pack and play. Thoughts of the sleeping situation (four bedrooms for seventeen adults and kids) were giving me high anxiety for days. But he was content as could be, if a bit sweaty. Worried he might discover how to climb out of the playpen, I left only the window at the far end of the room open. I decided that stuffy air was preferable to my child plummeting through the screen onto the pine-needle -blanketed forest floor below.
• No one was struck by a car as we crossed the street to the lake. Last year my niece was nearly hit. This year her little sister scraped up both knees trying to bolt across. I realized that the drivers who don't stop or even slow down when they see three adults trying to wrangle a wagon, two coolers, four beach bags and six little kids across a windy mountain road with no sidewalks are probably thinking the same thing I'm thinking: What are you, some kind of moron?
• I only uttered "I'd so much rather be at home right now" two times. After one of which Buggledaddy actually stepped in and removed the screaming child gripping my kneecaps.
• Bugglegirl slept down at the dock. In a pack and play, without sedatives, surrounded by cousins playing. This is the kid who chased me around the airport from midnight to four-thirty in the morning when we were snowed in. Who hasn't slept in a stroller since she was six months old. Can mountain air be bottled?
• I drank beer. In the middle of the day. Even though the chances of Buggleboy toppling into the lake were certainly higher for my doing so. Oh, and get this - I had fun. For this I'm mainly crediting my efforts to complain only minimally beforehand. And perhaps the aforementioned mountain air. And naturally the beer.