Nude Beaches--wait, what?

If you are planning to take your family for some fun and frolic by the shores of the Ocoee River, you should probably prepare for the nude beach. I wasn't prepared, you see.

I thought I was prepared for a picnic, for river rock jumping, for birdwatching, for tossing frisbees and tattoo research around the Whitewater Rafting Center.

But then there was a public service announcement that the floodgates at the dam downriver had opened, and this woman who appeared to be the mayor of Ocoee told me I shouldn't let the children near the water. Because at any moment they would be wiped out like the people who didn't listen to Noah.

After considering my feelings about forced baptism, I decided I was actually looking forward to letting my children choose when they wanted to be baptized, so we moved our little party bus to the contained lake area down river aways.

The lake area was nice enough for Baby Girl to attach herself like Huckleberry Finn to a waterlogged log. Is that redundant? She probably toyed with it for a good 30 minutes, just submerging it and standing it up like a totem pole and --wait, when does girlfriend go half an hour at home without needing some kind of screentime? Twenty minutes pass and the girl starts pawing for technology like she's going to go into AFib if I don't hook her up with some Netflix, stat.

Okay, now. For realios. That was an exaggeration.

It's more like 10 minutes before they are both going AFib.

Just kidding, my kids are able to play without electronic stimulation at times, but this waterlogged log action was looking pretty Jungle Book from where I was standing.

While Baby Girl was playing Bear Necessities, her brother was getting a whole 'nother kind of bare. The boy discovered that a wet swimsuit + wet T-shirt + sand does not for a comfortable lounging outfit make.

So we stripped him of his attire and attempted to dry the ensemb in the bright and blazing sun.

In the meantime, we attempted to wrap him in a towel. Doing the loin cloth thing lasted for about 0.08 seconds, when, per his boy contract, he made sure everyone knew that this beach? Was nude optional.

HAHA. "Naaakeeee boyyy," he squealed with delight, wearing a grin seen below in Appendix A.

My dear friend Christa gifted our boy with her shirt for the ride home.

So, to review: If you go to Ocoee, plan for the nude beach or at least bring my friend Christa. Otherwise, you're just doing tattoo research or getting flooded by the dam. Or both.

Doing me no favors

Oh, Child, remember that time when I told you we were going to go look at "my friend's house" in two minutes? Well, it just so happens that that friend was only loosely a "friend."  She was more along the lines of....someone I met telephonically yesterday, someone who has never met our brand of hot mess in person before, and who was prospectively going to lease out her rental property to us if we showed up and appeared sane and hygienic and capable of not throwing fists through windows and plaster. So, upon the two minute forewarning of our departure to go house hunt, Child, you took it upon yourself to do what I can only imagine in your brain worked out to mean Getting Ready.

  Child, there is a movie called "The Royal Tenenbaums" in which an actor named Owen Wilson's character Eli Cash goes on a wild drug-induced bender and crashes, quite literally, a wedding.

When you came to me All Ready to go look at the real estate tonight, I saw Eli Cash. In the form of a pixie-haired girl.  Who was not crashing my wedding. But who was unwittingly kinda crashing something else.

It was too late to wash it all off so away we went as a merry trio: Hot Mess Mama, Tater Tot boy, and Butterfly Girl.

On the way home, Little Man fell in the driveway and busted his lip. So all in all, we were a sight for sore eyes and probably unfit to live anywhere besides a yurt, upon whose sides you could paint butterflies.

***

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Would you like to donate a dollar to the...

Is it just my particular geography or singular luck that for the past month, EVERY transaction (with the exception of a self-check-out) is punctuated with a twinkly-eyed 17 year-old asking me if I'd like to tack on a dollar for the Good Samaritan Charity?  Surely I am not alone in this? Is it National Non-Profit Passive Fundraising Month everywhere? Because it's starting to give me a complex. And I am pretty pro-philanthropy, as much as someone who is probably a philanthropic cause herself can be. This add-a-dollar-on is starting to add up, however. The teenage cashier is all, I have this script, and I'm all, Yeah, I know it's a script, but it's the Children's Miracle Network. Who says NO to making a miracle happen for a child that only costs a dollar? Teenager is like, Oh, thank you SO much, like I just helped her make a donation quota and now she doesn't have to clean out the McNugget crumbs from the Playland tonight because she met her quota, and I'm all, You're so welcome. 

But then I'm at Bi-Lo on the very same day, and the disaffected teenager cashier is asking me if I want to donate to the Safe Harbor House, and then suddenly this is not even a question of economy or philanthropy, this is a test of gravity where the once disaffected teenager is peering into my soul, knowing full well that I just spent $.99 on an iTune mp3 of "Build me up, Buttercup" by The Foundations when I could have just listened to it ad infinitum on YouTube, but noooo, I just had to possess it for my very own, and now this teen is looking at me and waiting for me to say YES or NO I WILL NOT GIVE ONE WHOLE DOLLAR to the Safe Harbor House BECAUSE I'M A WRETCHED PERSON who spends her money frivolously on iTunes. And the teen is like, Okay, then your total comes to $14.39.

But what I really want to say back to this teen who can't wait to bag my root vegetables and go on his government-mandated 30 minute break is that the thirties are very hard, especially when you thought you were going to get a big payoff from your "investment property" and then you learn about what a real estate bubble really is, and you don't end up making a profit but actually running a total deficit, and that the real irony of all of this is that I'M ALSO LOOKING for a Safe Harbor House.  The teen cashier is already on his break reading a back issue of USWeekly in the break room as I grab my groceries and I want to bawl for all the people who are looking for their Safe Harbor.

*** Later I find a dollar in a compartment of our car and buy my daughter a cherry slush from Sonic. As I'm rejoicing that I found this gratuitous Benjamin in our vehicle, the drive-through cashier asks me if I'd like to add a dollar for the Children of Hope Fund.