Fortunately, I have some stress-reduction plans for this weekend (at least I hope the weekend will be less rather than more stressful). Jeff and I are driving down tonight to stay with my friends Sheldon and Lisa in Yorktown, and then going tomorrow morning to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, where we'll spend the day riding rollercoasters, watching cheesy shows featuring earnest college theater and music majors, and drinking beer. It's not the European vacation I'd prefer, but it's a fun cartoon facsimile.
As I was writing this, I started remembering my family's annual visits to Busch Gardens back in its earliest days, when I was in high school. I would invariably develop a crush on one or more of the cute male performers in the musical shows--I especially remember one called "Kaleidoscope"--as would my cousin and closest friend, Allyson, and the two of us would watch the show over and over. Between performances we'd stand outside near the stage door to get glimpses of the performers as they left and entered the theater.
With my ABBA records, my Cabbage Patch Kid I named Breandan Kieran, and my behavior as a Busch Gardens performer groupie, I was only a Tiger Beat subscription away from being a teenage girl (and in addition to an older cousin's hidden stash of Playgirl I thrillingly discovered, spurring frequent excuses to go visit her house, I occasionally snuck peeks at my sister's teen magazines; I remember still the picture of the Bay City Rollers dressed only in long mufflers). But now I'm all grown up... so I have Internet porn and Queer Eye..., and just lust after a new generation of sexy male actors and singers. Plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose, as Jeff might say.
You had a Cabbage Patch Kid?
Man, some guys have all the luck.
In fact, I still have him. He sits on a bench at the foot of my bed next to my original Wicket Warrick and Princess Kneesaa stuffed Ewoks.