McDonalds and the Maiden Voyage

First of all.....

McDonalds = ick.

Steph's school had a fundraiser at McDonalds tonight. We had to go there for dinner and I am really not a big fan (anymore). It's pretty bad when I ask my 3 year old what she wants to eat from there and her answer is:

"Nothing. I just want to eat a piece of Bologna at home."

The reason I say I don't like it anymore is because apparently I USED to like it.

See, when I was in junior high school my parents decided that it was a good idea to pile all four of us (my mom, dad, older brother and myself) into the station wagon and take a nice, leisurely, cross-country trip from Southern California to Tennessee for vacation. Except that my brother and I couldn't be in the same room for 5 minutes together much less in the back seat of a packed Subaru station wagon for like, an eternity, together. I remember sitting back there with my walkman blasted as high as it would go and being annoyed that I could still hear the music from the car radio. Then my batteries would start to die after only an hour or so and I would still listen as long as I could even though the song was playing reallllllly sloooooooow and the female singers all sounded like men with a verrrrry looooow voices.

When the batteries finally died I would wait until my brother went to sleep and then steal his.

Anyways, back to McDonalds.

On the trip, everytime my parents would ask us where we wanted to eat lunch or dinner, apparently my brother and I would say in unison "McDonalds".

This may be the one and only thing we agreed on in 17 years of intense sibling rivalry. Since we didn't eat out all that often growing up, McDonalds was impressive. Clearly gourmet to food connoisseurs like us. After a mere 17 straight meals of fine dining at the Golden Arches my parents lost all reasoning and drew a line in the sand.

They designated McDonalds as the "rip your lips off" place. That meant that if anyone so much as uttered the word McDonalds one more time on that trip they would have their lips ripped off.

And they were serious.

So, the next time they asked my brother and I where we wanted to eat we said in unison:

"The rip your lips off place".

Now that I have gotten that out of the way........

This weekend will be our Maiden Voyage (as my buddy Rachael would call it) in our new pop-up camper. We are leaving Friday night and coming home on Sunday....and I am getting all excited! The campground is called Warwick Woods and it is very close to home (only about 10/15 minutes away) so that if we have to come home for whatever reason it will be A-OK. We are taking Daisy Dog with us and I am hoping to talk my brother and his fiance into joining us for one night. I'll try and post pictures sometime next week.

In the meantime, I am off to regret forcing myself to eat at the dreaded "rip your lips off place" and to deal with the cooresponding stomach ache that gourmet food like that brings.