I am an only child. There is a reason for this: my mother is the 10th of 11 children. Every five years, those 11 and their brethren gather for a family reunion in some random place. Which is exactly why I’m somewhere in Bumf*@&, Maryland, outside the D.C. Beltway.

But let me back up.

Here’s the first thing I saw this morning:

Well, not true. This is actually the first thing I saw:

Because it’s good to start a long trip off with a really good greasy base.

Anyway, back to the first photo. You see those orange boxes on those signs? Those aren’t there because the state of Tennessee’s favorite color is orange. It means detour, as in the road ahead is closed. Also a very good way to start off a long trip.

Also, please note that the sky is a few shades lighter than I intended it to be. I managed to get through the especially challenging task of setting my alarm for 5:50 last night but could not pull off the equally demanding chore of turning that alarm on. Luckily, I have an internal alarm clock that wakes me up every morning at 7 as it did this morning. To which I said “Ohhhh noooooo.” That was an immediate sign my vacation had begun; normally that would have involved an f-bomb or two.

Also worth noting: the first song I heard on the radio was “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama. Because I have awesome taste in music it was the only thing on.

Fast forward to this sighting plus about two and a half hours:

That’s about the time when, after attending Mass (yes, we’re Catholic … how else does one end up with 11 children?) where my family accounted for half the congregation, my aunt did a faceplant on the concrete steps out front the church. The ambulance came, a handful of us went to the Bumf*@& Regional Hospital, where my mom stepped in vomit outside the ER door. My former ER doctor Dad, on the other hand, was in his element.

The Aunt is fine. Alive, though requiring surgery to repair a broken wrist and time to heal a few scratches and abrasions. I gather she’s high on morphine right now while awaiting a transfer to DC General Hospital because they don’t have any orthopaedic surgeons in Bumf*@&.

In all the hoopla, I managed to miss the DC blogger meetup, but am still hoping to meet Miss Heidi before the week is done to congratulate her on her engagement in person. Other things I plan to do include this and this.