Things that bother me the most about our tiny vacation household

We are seven people in the quaint little bungalow in the camp - the General's parents, his kid, his two nephews (preteens) and me. Every day the General says to me: just three more days ... Just two more days, try to bare it... Just a little while longer. I try to tell him: what the fuck are you talking about, I love it here. I love the waterslides and of all the people that I would have to vacation with, these are the best possible choice. I really don't want to go home.

The problem is, I want him, the General, to recognize the effort I am making to be normal. It is a little harder when we are all indoors or if anyone crosses my personal space and does something that I would otherwise want to correct in someone's attitude (like leaving up the toilet seat, throwing something in the waste basket, missing and ignoring it...) And sometimes I forget and tell people not to watch something on TV, because it is too stupid or I get in the middle of a discussion when G's mum is trying to wash the dishes when it was agreed from the start the kids will take turns. She will literally sneak out of the hut with the trash, so that the kids won't have to empty the bins. Her husband, G’s dad, almost threw himself away from a garden table where he was eating dinner, when I came to join him to read there. ‘I’ll get out of your way at once!’ What the fuck, dude? Do I really strike people as someone you need to instantly remove yourself from before I explode or is this level of politeness simply stupid?

The General has a tendency to forget, although he is flawless, he is not right all the fucking time. And by this definition, making me wrong all the time when we disagree. No, I don't think  people should eat white bread and drink tea just before we go for a swim and then a long drive. Oh, so everyone got sick in the car for some other reason? Excuse me for being a trained foot-soldier and having spent seven months in a freakking desert during SUMMER.

These kind of acts just boil me up and I start to feel incredibly trapped. Of course the General has asked me not to talk or, better yet, ever say anything the way I usually talk, but more importantly, he has also forbidden me to roam around. If I can have my way, I just leave the house at dawn and explore the region until almost noon. Then we have lunch and a nap and then we go to the pools where we play and have a good time. Because I am not allowed to wander, I am restless and cranky. I read, but get bored after an hour and then I write or draw and everyone starts looking at me and kids want to draw along and then we switch to playing cards and can't agree on rules and when the time comes to clean the table, nobody is to be found. I'm not saying it's not a pleasant mess. It is. It's a family idyll. It just isn't for me.

So when I ask the General to appreciate my effort, because it really is a full throttle honest effort to smile and just agree on how hot it is all the time, he gets upset that I have to make an effort at all and to just bare it for two more days, it is almost over.

Which part of I.DON'T.LIKE.PEOPLE... fails to elude you after nine years? Which part of me even bothering to make an effort fails to come through as me demonstrating how much I appreciate the opportunity to have this vacation? I really do. I am very grateful! I respect this family, I would even go as far as to say I prefer it to mine, but trying to PROTECT them from myself is bullshit. I’m not a serial killer for fuck’s sakes. I just think these kids couldn’t be more spoiled and the grown-ups deserve to be lazy for two fucking days.

And there is another thing. By example, I bought ten small cakes for dessert and wanted to tell the kids they can eat what they like, just to make sure seven remain for after lunch. I could just see how 'grandma' would cut in, saying she is freely giving away her own cake for the kids. At which point I would freak the fuck out, crazed with her bullshit sacrificial self-denying charade, taking things away from herself to please a pack of spoiled, fed to the gills, never-for-fucking-second having to do anything to have everything kids, who expect everything to be given to them and considering the times, everything always will be. This isn’t two years after the second world war. Where even I would do a lot to try and save the smallest. This is a new phone every year and blink-and-you-shall-have it time. I think nothing of them, I think a lot of her and when she pulls that ’no, the kids can take mine' or 'no, stay on the couch, kids, I will clean up after you', that just makes me turn red. So because I am not allowed to start whipping anybody, I appear as if I am not enjoying my stay. I will never understand why someone has such a deep need to spoil already spoiled people, seeing full well that never ends well. 

Or, veering my own blog back onto talking about myself, why the General continues to expect I will someday wake up and think it's cute, what the kids do and what gran does. It is true I prefer these lot to any other six co-vacationists I can think of, but he cannot expect me to feel the same when it's seven people in a molten hot bungalow, three of which are young teenagers or when it's just the two of us. 

How would you expect Boadicea to do the house chores and smile during when three fucking preteens pretend it’s their turn to enjoy life while people who spend their whole lives working on a farm should do the cooking and the cleaning after them?

Here I go, with the camera (and all the chargers) bag, full of notepads, newspapers, postcards and pens, and with the even heavier duffel bag, full of socks, food, watercolors and inks... With this on me, the road could take me anywhere, especially towards the sea or down a slow wide river, and I would be in my comfort hunting grounds. Call me a road poet or a road fiend or a huntress of beautiful frames between blinks: I am no different than a mass of young travelers with similar bags and similar skins, hungry for new city scents and summer humidity that promises adventure. Imagine a great traveling god exploding and the shards of his soul getting stuck in a number of people - all of us are right here, going right there. All chatty, all interesting, all kind, all good lovers, thieves and bums the lot of us, all wise and unspoiled. Never say no to food, never say no to water, bathroom or bed, and always sample everything within reach. Pity the stagnant. Pity the clean.

Walking pass the tables of the street cafes is like tuning the radio: every language is different and every conversation has a different tune. Because I am not tall, young, dressed pretty or tanned, I am completely invisible and nobody even noticed the sound of my camera. It's 99 in the shade, so the comfort seekers flock under fans, umbrellas, sprays and air conditioners like you see sheep do under rare trees in the field. Kids play in the fountains and teenagers pretend to be playful and kick the water at one another, cooling off and getting away with loud behavior. Nobody is talking on the phone, because you cheeks literally get wet from glass. Icarus wouldn't have gotten off the ground at all, today, the wax would melt off his falcon suit like bad honey. 

Later

I arrived to the tiny train station in Čatež, a tiny little town with a medieval core I am yet to explore, several really sad abandoned villas  and a lot of brand new shopping buildings that are exactly the same in isle blueprint as everywhere else and you get dizzy with disorientation when you walk out and you are not in your own street ... I miss one of those, because I have it studied down and they have great cheesecake dessert, but am not allowed to go. Rules are back on! That's right, I am back in my baby's arms! There was kissing! There was covetousness! There were deep passionate stares and lots of things said about how much we've missed each other. And a chariot ride to my castle. (An old Hyundai to the camp bungalow, if you must nitpick.) I gotsta say, when I suggested I have no problem walking from the station to the resort, I might have not taken into account 8 kilometers of asphalt in 104'C. Five miles is a morning stroll for me, but not at three in the afternoon during the dog days. 

The resort is massive if a bit on the worse-for-wear side, with large winding pools with waterslides and waves and really a lot of people in them, looking for any means of cooling themselves. A lot of them get shoulder sunburns, because after two hours in the neck-deep majority of the area, everything washes off and you still don't want to leave. Because you can only use the poor card once a day, people enter the pool site and make themselves picnic-comfortable, then leave in the afternoon. This is living at its most normal. I can do this. I’ve read about it. I’m mentally prepared. The General's mum can't get out of her mother hen mode and continues to care for everybody, arranging clean towels, sun block spray (and after sun burns spray), food, cold drinks, cleaning up, making sure everyone is comfy. The three youngsters are hazel brown, running about, playing card games, comparing waterslides, occasionally doing chores and sleeping under the roof, up a ladder, where they usually throw things down. (Like cell phones. Or themselves.) Clumsy buggers. I took over G's tiny room, because I love tiny rooms and it's too hot for two people to share it, he’s been evicted to the couch. Only because he managed to forget the chord for the hammock ... Levitation is way overrated..

For its mildly posh trailer park, I can neither imagine this is a white trash drug dealer type of hell, nor really a cushy Cuban beach site. I miss my dog. I found some kittens not too far, but their mother was not too happy me borrowing one. They keep a lot pf cats around, I must have seen at least four, probably to maintain vermin control. It's nice, if not as neat as it could be and I really cannot abide trash. They do a lot to keep the place clean, just not everything. Same as kids do. ‘But I DID wash the plates! Nobody said anything about the glasses!’ …  You stray but a little from the main attractions and already the trash cans are full and rotting and have been since the start of the season. Consistency is what I'm saying. Keep it expensive or keep it poor. I understand it's too much to expect there'll be a murder or at least an armed robbery any time soon, but I can also see why some people come here to do nothing but read on porches, have barbecues in the evening and play in paddling ponds during the red hot days. 

I've already explored everything I possibly can within the perimeter and arranged a coffee date with my brother who lives none too far, and also plan to go see the castle and the town and probably something else ... The days here are VERY long. Problem is, I have decided to never do anything without the General again and he's in the reading-sitting-eating-paddling mode this week. Damn the normal folk for seeking comfortable vacations. How can they not understand I LIKE suffering in heat, blisters, backpack burns and smelling like something that's been on the train for eight hours? ... 

these are my barns from the other side! I never rode pass them on a train before :D

Just 8 :D No street name. Just 8.

Note the kitten? :D

There are so many of these. Massive old houses, completely abandoned.

 

This is 'the Pirate' section of the camp

Now I know corn can walk.

Bunch of more pickies from the Ethno museum in Lj (because, you know, I like to take just about everything)