The cousins from top left to bottom: Harry, Charlie, Johnny, Kevin, Kristie, Matt, Timmy, Katie, Colleen, Me

What are we paying for?

I've been spending this week with my dad's family on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We've been here since Sunday and it's been one disaster after another.

Here's a rundown of all the people staying in our house:

My Mom and Dad: Centreville, VA
Three kids: Johnny, Timmy, and myself.

Aunt Kathy: Poughkeepsie, NY
Three kids: Kevin, Katie, and Kristie.

Uncle Tom and Aunt Lynn: Kansas City, MO
Two kids: Charlie and Harry.

Aunt Carol: Gainesville, FL
One kid: Baby Jimmy (he's five years-old but will be forever referred to as "baby")

Uncle Jimmy: Gilbertsville, PA (though he left on Tuesday his kids stuck around)
Two kids: Colleen and Matt.

Auntie Mary Pat: Levittown, NY

Uncle Chris: Arlington, VA

That's 20 people. This is not including Uncle Michael and Short Aunt Janet (who could not make it because of health reasons), Uncle Jimmy because he left already and his wife Aunt Kathy who was never here.

We're all staying in this huge eight bedroom house near the beach. It's a beautiful house and no more than seven or eight years old so we can't imagine why it seems to be falling apart.

When we got here on Sunday we noticed that the waterfall to our pool doesn't work. Yes, our pool has a waterfall and I was very excited about it, but it doesn't work. No biggie. But the hot tub was more like a lukewarm tub and didn't get fixed until today. The only thing to do at night is go in the hot tub! How can you hang out in a lukewarm tub??

After being here for a few hours on Sunday, I was walking up the stairs after waking up from my afternoon nap, and my brother Johnny decides he's going to flick me with his key chain thing. Well, I'm cranky when I first wake up so I wasn't having it. I turned around from the top of the stairs and started kicking him. In order to stop himself from falling ass first down the stairs, he grabbed onto the railing. He managed to not fall on his ass, though the railing snapped in half. Anyway, my dad fixed the railing and you can hardly tell that it's been snapped in half and put back together!

Then we opened the refrigerator. What an old piece of crap. The door had no bars on it to keep the ketchup and cans of root beer from falling onto the floor. My little brother Timmy made duct tape bars which have proven to work just as well, but make the fridge look like it belongs in a trailer park. Or a dump.

Then Uncle Tom was leaning back in a chair after dinner last night and he broke the chair.

Katie's been sick all week and had to be taken to the ER yesterday.

But the be all end all of our disasters here has occurred over the past few days. The toilets have been going crazy. Three toilets in the house have been stopping up for no apparent reason. I woke up this morning to the sound of water dripping onto my bathroom floor from the air conditioning vent in the ceiling. I ran across the hall to my brothers' bathroom to get some extra towels, only to find that the flood was even worse in their bathroom. Then I ran upstairs hoping to find someone to help with this flooding emergency but found that Aunt Kathy's toilet had overflowed, being the cause of the flood. The water has seeped through the ceiling and the walls.
A plumber finally came today and told us to stop flushing our feminine products, but that wouldn't explain why the toilet in my brothers' room was stopped up.. unless there's something I don't know about. Personally, I feel that a house with ten toilets in it should have a plumbing system well-equipped to handle the occasional tampon. SHEEESH.

Oh yeah, and the oven doesn't work.

And now we've got two hurricanes or tropical storms (or who the hell knows) coming up the coast.. it's supposed to rain until who knows when, but we're leaving on Sunday. Thank goodness.

But, the beach has been nice, the water warm and the waves timid. Perfect for bobbing around in the ocean. And my mom did buy me a beautiful sundress from Lilly Pulitzer and the food's been awesome. My family's a little insane and I've been drunk most nights, but eh, it's vacation, right?

The Keegan Family Reunion 2004: Livin' it up in the "Jewel of denial."