The Rest of the Month of Caesar

The dads twisted my arm into golfing on my birthday. . .

What's up, fam.

July was, well, probably the busiest summer month The Houghs have had in years.  Without question.

For the entirety of the month, we were barely home:  we'd be gone for four days, home for two days, gone for another five days, home for four days, gone for a week, home for three days, gone for another week, home for a night, gone again for four days, home for two, etc.  All.  Frickin'.  Month.  

Multiple trips out to Eight Point Lake, a mission trip down to (ugh) Cincinnati, a stint counseling at a Junior High Camp in Sanford, camping with High School friends, Momcation '22, our annual trip out to Jellystone Campground up in Grayling with the Midland friend group, and a treasure trove of social outings scattered about on the weekends.  Consequently, the month flew by in, like, an hour and a half.

So here, dear readers, is a brief run-down of everything else the unflappable Houghs experienced during the glorious Month of Caesar.  Enjoy. . .

So the 'normalcy' of the month really kicked off on my birthday, seeing how as the few days before that we were up at Eight Point.  I didn't have any plans for my birthday at all this year - my usual go-to of hitting up my local record store, Radio Wasteland, was shot down because the owner was out of town. Kris went back to work and the girls hung out with friends, so I had the day to myself, which, at my age, meant that I had time to tackle some yardwork and boring house shit like that.  In the evening, though, the dads asked me to go out with them for their weekly excursion out to Beach Hollow in Freeland.

As you all know, golf is certainly not my jam - I find it pretentious and douchey as all hell - but driving around in a golf cart and having a few drinks while listening to music and hanging out with the guys sure beat the hell out of sitting on my back porch and reading a book or something.

Unlike most other times that I've gone out and accompanied these guys on golf outings - where I just smoke a pipe and drive a golf cart and talk to people while they play - this evening I actually played the dumbass sport myself.  And I am not good at all, folks.

Unlike Mitch, who is an actual golf pro. . .

Perfect weather for something like this, though - frickin' gorgeous out.

Morgan, Erik and Mitch

Mitch and I partnered up for this evening, since most of the other guys are all about on the same skill level and felt that the only way to make it fair was to put the group's best golfer with the group's worst golfer.

Morgan tees off.  This, for me, was definitely the hardest part of the game.

Now, putting is something I can actually do, and when it came to this I was actually holding my own against the regular golfers, much to their surprise.  I can thank Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf for facilitating many, many years of honing this skill.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, folks - there is nothing better than driving around in a golf cart, blasting music and having a few drinks.

The Dynamic Duo.

Keeping it classy.  I wasn't following dress code for this evening at all, guys - polo not tucked in, wearing sandals.  F*** it.

Someone suggested we take a pic of the group towards the end of our 9-hole round, so I set a timer on my phone and propped it up against my Yeti on the green.  From Left to Right: Erik, Morgan, Tom, Mitch, Omkar, and Yours Truly. 

After getting the shot I sent the pic out to our Dad group thread, since a couple of the other guys - Lonnie and Ryan, namely - generally golf every week but couldn't for some reason this time around.  Ryan saw this and got some extreme FOMO, so he added himself in the pic and kicked it back to us.

The Clubhouse, at the end of our evening round.  And that wraps up how I turned 42, folks.

The next day, Kris and I spent some more time tackling yardwork in the backyard.  I had mowed earlier, but there's always a shit-ton back there that needs work, seeing how our yard is the size of a frickin' park and everything.  This time around Kris focused on cleaning out the garden beds and I trimmed trees and started a fire to burn off all the debris and clippings.

After years of grumbling about it, Kris finally decided to destroy one of the old birdhouses that had been in the garden when we first bought the house.  I personally didn't mind it, but most of the paint was worn off it and Kris hated the damn thing, so I tore it down for her and we added its carcass to the inferno.

We spent hours today continually adding crap this fire. . .

Eventually, the fire raged on well into the evening, so we decided to just make a family evening out of the deal. . .

Obnoxious dogs.

Late on in the week I made this happen.  Not sure how, exactly - I either used the wrong bottle of weed-killer (the RoundUp-ish all-vegetation killer instead of the grass-safe stuff), or else I screwed up and added too much of the grass-safe concentrate to the mix (we use the concentrate because it's a better product and lasts longer.)

You can see all the dead spots scattered about the yard. . .

You can rest assured, however, that there were no more weeds in my backyard following this treatment, i can tell you that much. . .

The Friday of Momcation '22, a bunch of us dads decided to get together anyway, but were foced to sorta-parent since we were the only adults left in town.  Tom hosted a Mexican Night over at his place, so we threw together our kids and a dish to pass and headed out over that way.

Not as fancy as when the wives are around, but definitely manageable.

Meanwhile, down somewhere around Kalamazoo.  The wives, as mentioned before, have super-boring weekends away - all they do is sit around by a pool all weekend, drinking seltzers and doing nails.  I would get bored out of my mind.

Mexican stuff.

And, of course since it's us guys, there's lots of meat on hand. . .

The wives like their souvenir weekend cups.  One of these chicks has a Cricket vinyl-thingy and they all love making their own cups (which are temperature, color-changing, for whatever reason.)

Amy, Kelli, Deanna, and Danielle

Some of the older kids, hanging around inside at the VIP table (Alayna by this point had already been driven home - I forced her to come out and make a plate at the very least, and she tried to fill it completely up with sushi someone had brought.)

Kids are weird.

Hanging out on the deck

Seriously.  An entire weekend of just this would get so old after awhile.  Zero adventure, folks.

Tom's Amazon package filled with underwear showed up while we were all over there, he was pretty excited about it.

Ella, Sophie and Abby on the ol' backyard swing.

Broke out the cornhole boards after dinner (which should come as no surprise to anyone, honestly. . .)

Tom and Morgan

Danielle, Courtney, Kris and Deanna

Someone started a random fire along the treeline for whatever reason, no one was hanging out back there.  That's gonna end well. . . .

Blurry-ass pic from the wives at the end of the night

I'd get pics like this from Kris throughout the weekend - they all tend to look the same after awhile.

Good thing Kris wore her sunglasses. . .

Tanning. . . I guess.

Kris ordered me this Masonic lapel pin display which had been on one of my Amazon lists for my birthday.  I found the seller on Etsy and have ordered a few things from his store before, he does good work.  My growing collection of pins was overtaking my jewelry box, so this thing was a godsend.

Kris is getting a new boss next month (the dude in the yellow shirt) as her old boss is retiring and is selling the practice to the incoming dentist.  The guy apparently is a huge Star Trek fan (seriously) and so Kris and her coworkers all made Star Trek shirts for when he came into the office for the first time to meet everyone.  I'm sure he was thrilled.

Okay, so this is gonna seem really random:  Alayna signed up to volunteer as a caddy at some big, annual LPGA tournament down at the Midland Country Club this month.  Crazy for this kid, I know. It went down like this: the guy from the club responsible for gathering together caddy volunteers for this event just so happens to be a patient at Kris' dental office, and they got to talking about the upcoming event back in June or so.  When Kris mentioned she had a teenage daughter, he recommended she sign up, that she would have fun doing it, even if she had never caddied before or knew a Goddamn thing about golf.

The selling point for Alayna on this whole thing - because, like her old man, she has zero interest in gold - was that, despite being a strictly volunteer event, most pro golfers tip their caddies. Not guaranteed, of course, but it's the norm.  We told Alayna it was a sure-fire thing that she'd be paid for her efforts, but she decided to hold out for the lucrative golf tips anyway.

Her and I had to attend a two-hour long training session at Midland High, where they talked about where to stand on the course, when to approach the golfer, etc.  Then we had to buzz her over to the Country Club in order for her to pick up her 'uniform' (a shirt, hat, lanyard, string bag, etc.)  The following morning I had to drop her off back at the school, where they had shuttles waiting to ferry the kids to the country club.

 This event took all day, and five caddies were assigned to five amateur golfers who accompanied a legit pro golfer through the 18-hole course at the country club.  At the end of this course, they let the caddies take turns hitting golf balls (which Alayna had never done before.)

When we picked her up that evening, back at Midland High, Alayna was pretty pumped - the golfer she was assigned to tipped her $80, so she definitely wants to do this again next summer.

The following week, the girls accompanied a few other girls from Kris' church on a Mission Trip down to - ugh - Cincinnati, Ohio for some churchy volunteer work.

Their small contingent teamed up with other Methodist youth groups from Mt. Pleasant (and somewhere else, I forget) and caravanned down to the Butthole of the Nation in vans.

The morning Kris drove the girls out to Mt. Pleasant for the Mission Trip departure, Yours Truly set off for the Sanford Community of Christ campgrounds, where I was once again counseling at a Junior High Camp (something I haven't done since 2019.)

As part of the agreement for me signing up for something like this, I was once again placed in command of the infamous Cabin D - my old alma mater.

Camp numbers have dwindled to next to nothing anymore - which should come as to no surprise, really, seeing how church attendance is plummeting everywhere - so the camp was smaller than anything I had ever experienced.  There were only five boys at the entire camp (this was our cabin, here), which is a far cry from the 80 or 90-camper camps I grew up going to.  Pretty depressing stuff.

Campfire over 'Sanford Lake' - another depressing punch to the gut.  It should go without saying that I did not teach canoeing class this year.

Mission trip kids, at a pit stop somewhere down in the bowels of Ohio. . .

Sunrise over Sanford. . . um. . . field.

The girls would end up spending their mornings and afternoons serving at various places throughout Cincinnati - furniture stores, thrift stores, food banks, stuff like that.

Another shot of Sanford Lake.  Seriously mind-blowing looking out from familiar territory out into that shit-show.

Having ice cream. . . somewhere.  I don't know much about any of these pictures, the youth leaders would just text us random pics throughout the week.

Abby and some people.

Another morning at camp.

Abby's group (her and Alayna were placed in different groups, on purpose, so that they could socialize with other people.)

Halfway through the week, all the kids in the mission group were taken to King's Island, which, I take it, is kinda like Ohio's version of Michigan Adventures. . .

(Alayna looks thrilled.)

Of course she had to spend money on this bullshit.

My grandpa's ashes are all over this place, which is funny to think about when you watch kids spreading their blankets all over the place for campfire.

Here's people in another place. . .

. . .and another.

One morning, around breakfast, we heard a bunch of noise coming from the artist-formerly-known-as-Sanford Lake.  These bulldozers were grinding up a bunch of the brush that had grown up in the area since the Great Dam Bursting of 2020, and folks were saying that they're trying to remove it all before the lake fills back up. . . in five or six years.  I don't see the point of this - wouldn't all this vegetation just grow back?

I have no idea what she's doing here.  Zero context for ya, folks.

I guess this is some kinda church service, which I suppose makes sense since it's a Methodist mission trip and everything.

Towards the end of the week, Kris went up to Clare to visit her mom and her new place. . . and to drop off a cat she had picked up at the Midland Humane Society (Kris' mom had been wanting a pet to keep her company.)

I f***ing hate cats.

Marcy and Kris

The weekend we all came back to Midland, Kris dyed Alayna's hair (she wanted her tips purple.)

So this was fun.  I had an inflamed lymph node under my armpit, which I had first noticed about six months ago.  Over the course of the last few weeks, however, it began to grow in size, red in color, and had grown more and more painful.  At first, I was able to keep the pain at bay with Ibuprofen, but after awhile - and during the entirety of my time at Sanford Jr. High Camp - the pain became unbearable, like a golf ball-sized blister under my armpit.  It got to the point where I was forced to make a last-minute appointment with my doctor and drove to their office in the evening to have them look at it.  After checking it out, they told me that it had become infected and they needed to drain it: the PA and a nurse had to numb my armpit and then cut multiple incisions in and around the swelled area in order to start draining the wound.  What came out was, like, a pint of frickin' clear fluid and lots and lots of blood.  It took forever, and afterwards they had to pack a bunch of gauze into the open wound, which was probably one of the top three most painful things I have ever had to endure.  They told me I'd have to just keep gauze over it and change my dressings multiple times per day, as it was going to continuously drain - a lot - over the course of the next week or so.  Frickin' disgusting, but the pain went away almost immediately, much to my relief.  Talk about a weird-ass injury.

And, in closing, here's a shot of the wives, who all went out for dinner one evening towards the end of the month.  They can't go out without taking a group picture, it's ridiculous.

- Brian