Well, I can’t believe how quickly the summer has flown by.  It feels like just yesterday we were in the throes of winter, wishing for warmer days.  Now we’ve had weeks of 90+ temperatures and the end of summer is creeping around the corner.  The older I get, the quicker time seems to fly by.

I know I’ve been a little MIA this summer, but sometimes it’s hard to focus on writing when I’d rather be outside soaking up the sun!  You know how it is…

Speaking of soaking up the sun, T and I just returned from a week at the beach with his family.  We were in Hilton Head, and had an amazing time.  Unfortunately the vacation wasn’t as relaxing as I wanted it to be due to Murphy and his stupid laws throwing some major kinks into the trip.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and spent that day lounging around our private pool, having cocktails with the family.  Since it was already a bit late in the day, we opted to wait until the next day to hit the beach.

Our pool – my jellyfish free happy place

Sunday morning we were greeted by rain showers, which pushed our beach time into the early afternoon since no one wanted to sit in the sand in a torrential downpour.  Once the sun broke through the clouds, we hauled ourselves to the beach and into the water.  I was happy as a clam, until about 1.5 minutes in the sea when I was viciously attacked by a jellyfish.  I shit you not when I say attacked.  It wasn’t just a mere sting, it was a full on assault.  My poor leg welted up instantly and was shaking so badly from the pain.  I had to limp out of the water.

Once I dragged myself onto the shore, we all assessed the damage.  My leg was a hot mess.  I had tentacle marks up and down my right leg and they were so red, and stung like someone had lit my leg on fire.  Poor T ran up to the house to get a bottle of vinegar to use to neutralize the poison.  While I waited patiently for his return, his dad was helping me rub sand all over my leg to remove any of the tentacles that were still attached to my leg.

When T finally returned, we doused my leg in vinegar, but unfortunately it really didn’t do much.  His brother had done some research and found out that putting a baking soda paste on the stings would help, so we headed to the store to buy some.  While we were there, people kept telling me it was the worst sting they had ever seen (wonderful!).  I also picked up a bottle of jellyfish sting neutralizer, just in case.

After about two hours of serious pain, the swelling went down and things started to subside.  A few Bacardi and Diet Cokes with T’s mom helped me forget about the pain and enabled me to enjoy the rest of my night.

My leg after the first round of stings

The first stings a few days later

For the next few days, I was pretty leery to get back into the water.  I hovered on the shoreline like a wounded puppy and never went higher than knee-deep water.  T told me I was being ridiculous, and that there was no way in hell that I’d get stung again.  Eventually, I let my guard down a bit because I knew he was right.

That Wednesday, T’s mom and I bought some inner tubes so we could spend the day floating in the ocean.  I figured this would be a safe and viable option for me because most of my body would be out of the water, and away from the evil jellyfish.  I floated around most of the afternoon, without constantly staring in the water, searching for jelly globs.

At one point I drifted downstream from everyone else, and tried to paddle my way back.  With the pull of the current, it was taking way more effort than necessary to get back over to them, so I decided I’d hop off the float and just walk over.  As soon as my legs hit the water, I felt another God-awful stinging sensation in both of my legs.  Yup, I’d gotten jellyfished a second time.

By this point, I was over it.  No one else was getting attacked, why only me?  I stormed out of the water, cussing like a sailor (sorry families with small children) and sprayed myself with the jellyfish sting spray (glad I picked that up) .  I decided that was going to be the end to my beach day, so I went back to the house.

Luckily, the second round of stings wasn’t as bad is the first.  That time it felt more like razor burn, and it didn’t swell up.  For the next few days I had some additional faint red lines to match my very red welts.  Then I woke up on Friday morning…

Both of my legs were super red, welty, and itched like hell.  All my faint lines had swollen up and would not stop itching.  I decided that it was time to go see a doctor since the majority of my legs were covered in stings.  T and I spent our last full day of vacation hunting down a doctor’s office (luckily it was an overcast day).  I ended up getting some kind of steroid shot for the itching and swelling, as well as a tetanus shot.  The doctor also gave me oral steroids to help with the healing process (which make me eat like a heifer).  It’s been three days since I was at the doctor, and I still itch like crazy, but I think they are getting better – slowly but surely.

This is what my newer stings looked like today – they are much redder in real life

To top off the “whatever can go wrong will go wrong vacation,” my car ended up dying on Friday.  T and I found this out as we tried to take my car to the doctor’s office.  We thought it was a dead battery since I hadn’t driven it all week, but unfortunately that was not the case.  The fuel pump had to be replaced, which meant we had to have my car towed to a shop so we could leave for home the next day.  The damn thing cost a small fortune, but my car was fixed and we made it home safe and sound.

And since we haven’t spent enough money on random catastrophe’s on this trip, T ended up knocking my month-old cell phone off the counter onto the tile floor, resulting in a shattered screen.  :( Luckily I have insurance, so I was able to get it replaced (but I still had to pay $130 for a new one…damn deductible).

My poor broken phone

Even though a million and one things went wrong during out trip, we still had an amazing time.  We stayed in the cutest house, complete with a screened-in pool.  We cooked delicious food, and spent a majority of the time sipping cocktails, gorging on yummy food, and floating in the pool and ocean.  It was so much fun to have a whole week off of work to relax and hang with T’s family because they are a cool bunch of people.

Sorry for the marathon post!  Hope you’ve all had an amazing summer so far!

So, have you ever had vacation filled with disasters?