Margaritaville to Crazy Town

A story from early last week:

Today was the first day of summer vacation.  Today was the first day all of my children would be home all day alone with me.  Today I went to Crazy Town four times.

Let us back up two days.  It was a gorgeous Saturday.  Frankly, a downright perfect summer day, complete with a great breeze and zero humidity.  Epic, really.  It was a day for many wonderful things.  But today, I was going to my first Jimmy Buffett concert.

Why the Buffett concert going experience is not part of every human being’s regular therapy, I can’t surmise.  I have never seen, nor experienced, the kind of widespread happiness that transpires amongst all concertgoers at Buffett.  It’s a little freaky, all this happy happy, but man, I bet no one would require their meds that week, if they hit a Buffett concert. 

Let me be perfectly clear here.  If tailgating at Buffett in the bright sunshine, with its unsurpassable people watching, blender beverage sharing, tiki bar hopping, parrot hat wearing, vegan burger eating (that’s me, sorry), flip flop cruising, and downright pure neighborly loving for all humankind doesn’t make you sickeningly happy, and simultaneously exalt that you would live to be 100 while going to Buffett concerts the whole time, I don’t think there’s anything else out there that could do the same.

And we haven’t even entered the concert arena.  The happiness just goes on and on through every people-hugging song.  Seriously, even if you’re not a die hard fan, (much like myself), who doesn’t want to: 

Nibble on spongecake

Watch the sun bake

And waste away in Margaritaville? (I mean if you have to ‘waste away’, Margaritaville is as good a place as any.)

While you’re there, there are even frozen concoctions to help you hang on when you blow out your flip flop.  Life is pretty good in Margaritaville.

My permanent smile lasted through Father’s Day right up until today when, as I stated earlier, I went to Crazy Town.  Four times.

I don’t get to Crazy Town very often.  It’s usually a pretty special trip when a host of circumstances all collide, much like I imagine what the Big Bang might have been like.  Crazy Town is purely a state of mind, like Island Momtality.  When I get to Crazy Town, I feel similar to the girl in the original Exorcist movie when she sits on her bed possessed.  My eyes turn into piercing knives and my face turns tomato red, and my throat, from which shrilling sounds come forth, becomes scorched.  Yikes!  And it’s aimed at the Professor and Sly Fox.  (Head between knees.) And although it’s more bark than bite, I always have a sense of regret after going to Crazy Town.

This kind of yelling at my kids either makes you feel pretty good that you never get that mad at your precious angels, or you know you’ve been to Crazy Town too.

This is what I’ve learned in retrospect:  These two big brothers must learn how to be together again, now that school is out.  They’ve got new levels of development under their belts acquired over the past year.  They need to relearn each other’s position, needs, feelings and unexpressed emotions.  This takes a little time.  I was blindsided four times today as they fought, but now I am learning how to let these guys do this work.  They will figure this out.

As I think back, it is entirely possible that my four trips to Crazy Town might have been postponed, had I not visited Margaritaville and its tiki bars just two days ago.