You may be sprite, you may be sprong

Welcome one, welcome all, back to Mount Olympus, may you catch the goats that roam freely through life’s path!

I write to you today despite the fact that not too much has happened and despite how tired my eyes are.

They are very tired.

So today I awoke, joyous since we had three hours before we had to leave. I spent one of them lying in bed reading, the next lying in a sofa upstairs reading, and the last quickly moving around, showering, packing, checking for lost things.

At one point, it was funny because Mum said, “I may as well make use of this aircon one last time”, and it turned on with a happy little tune, so mum said with great disgust, “happy little bugger”, but then stood in front of it and dramatically flung out her arms and tipped her head upwards like some sort of Christ the Redeemer.

I laughed. No one else witnessed this moment and I felt a strong need to include it in the blog.

We got ready and then had some time to relax. Lily and I were being vaguely mean to each other in the nicest way possible. I squeezed into a tiny space next to Allegra en Dad, smooshing them both, as I wheedled Allegra into letting me watch Shadow and Bone with her on the boat (since my phone is dead).

Lily then said to Dad, “if my child had just taken all my space, I would be saying, ‘why didn’t I abort?’”. Mum got a bit annoyed with her at this, but then I knocked his sunglasses off, and Dad turned to me and solemnly said, “why didn’t I abort?”

We laughed.

I continued to ask Allegra in increasingly whiny tones as I am famous for, if Lily is to be believed. Everyone was telling her to not give in.

Then dad knocked my hat off my head. I told him as much, and he said, “why wasn’t I aborted?”

We laughed again.

As we walked out the door, I had not yet given up, and Allegra was won over by my charm and quick wit, and finally said yes. Yay!

So we made our way to the main town for the last time, dropped off our car, the guy nicely let us leave our bags in the shop while we killed three hours, that’s right, we are the fabled Murderers of Time, and we strolled around.

We bought a magnet, we walked through some sketchy back alleys, Lily and I talked
about moving to Paris, and then we sat down for a drink at a very nice and cool looking restaurant after all the assassination had been completed.

But upon a glance at the menu, we could not resist getting food. Lily and I shared a vegan ciabatta, it was so good (deep fried shitake, or, as Allegra reads it, sh*t cake). Dad had a tasty tasty salad, Tate had something with chicken, and mum had an eggs Benedict with not enough hollandais sauce (mum usually asks for extra on the side) so she made a very sad face. It was heartbreaking.

But damn was our food tasty as can be!

As we ate, many a “funny” conversation was had. One example is when I told Lily that she pronounced “prodigy” wrong (she had told a story earlier about her dream in which Tate was an f1 “progidy” and Max Verstappen came to recruit her). Allegra said, with great derision, “it’s progidy”, Lily agreed with me, “no it’s prodigy” and Allegra said, with more disgust, “well that’s f***ing stupid”. We all laughed.

Another example is when I had a different lemonade brand than sprite, my all time fave, much to mum’s chagrin, and Dad said, “you cut off your nose to sprite your face”. Not for any reason, just because he wanted to incorporate the word sprite into a sentence. Lily then proposed “in sprite of the fact”, I offered a more accurate usage, “water sprites”, and Dad sighed and said, “you may be sprite, you may be sprong”.

You now understand the speech marks around the word “funny”.

We had some more time, so we walked along to the docks.

And with great horror, we saw a half sunken boat. And underneath it, a fully sunken boat. And underneath that, another fully sunken boat.

It freaks me out a lot, to see abandoned stuff. I stared in morbid fascination and mounting horror until I was pulled along.

There was one piece of wood that stuck off the edge of the docks, a small way over the water, and Tate said, “haha, I’ll walk the plank”.

She didn’t. But we made it to a beach, turned around to head back, passed it again, and I told her to put her money where her mouth was. Everyone in the family told her not to, that it was dangerous, but I had sufficiently egged her on, so she stood on it. I stood on the part on land, to stop it from flipping. I begged anyone to take a picture, as she edged further out despite complaints from the family.

And then we heard a loud crack. Tate scrambled back onto the safety of land. Her eyes told of fear and a feral will to survive.

I wonder what could have happened had I stepped off the wooden plank at that time. Haha.

But the time came to head back, pick up our bags, and wait for our ferry. It was a fairly boring wait, I will spare you the details. And then we got in the boat, managed to secure seats, and I watched Shadow and Bone with Allegra, on my headphones since they are earbuds and not headphones like hers, so we could share.

After mayhap one episode, we paused to play the music charades game (when one person has headphones and acts out the words until the other guesses the song) to Gracie Abrams’ The Secret of Us. But rookie mistake on my part: we used Allegra’s headphones because they are better quality. And after the album was through, we watched Shadow and Bone again. But Allegra did not let me connect my headphones. So I had to read subtitles. But I tired of that, so I decided to see how far I could get into Hamilton before I didn’t know a song by heart.

It was three songs: I am a failure.

Finally we arrived at Rhodes, opening a wide possibility for jokes. Watch out for Dad’s blog titles. I prefer to say “James Rhodes?” Every time someone says Rhodes, because I am Marvel obsessed.

My sisters sometimes then say, “You mean James Rose” as a reference to that time we played Empires with the Australian family and they misheard me; my correcting lead to my downfall.

Anyway.

A fifty minute drive listening to the bopping tunes of mgk was next. We saw many, many abandoned houses and buildings and even an entire abandoned apartment complex? I was very freaked out.

We also passed four hitchhiking guys, dad said “sorry dudes, not today”, so all four of us turned around to see them, and Allegra then said, “uhh, let’s turn around!” Because they were rather good looking.

We all laughed. Allegra is funny.

We made it to our final place with no small amount of difficulty, but it was very nice, and they had bread, cheese, butter, and ham. My sisters and I made ourselves sandwiches (with or without ham depending on our vegetarianism), but then Mum and Dad informed us of the time: after 7!

I have no concept of time.

We went out for dinner and stopped at the first place we saw. I upgraded my can tab collection (I now have 51) and dinner was quite tasty, and altogether twas a fun time. Tate and leg took some pictures of some cats that were wandering around. We had desert, I will spare you Lily’s thoughts on Apple Pie, although the baklava was delicious!

And then we stopped at a supermarket in the way home to collect breakfastables, which is where I found my 51st can tab on the floor (because of Lily, I keep almost calling them Tan Cabs).

The walk home was fun, although dark, and we passed an abandoned building that freaked me out. What is wrong with Rhodians and abandoning their buildings?

But once we arrived safely home, I tried to write the blog despite my tiredness. And I failed, due to said tiredness.

Everyone except me had a night swim, the twins and Lily were going kind of crazy doing “cardio” and such, and I chilled with the fam trying to get an opening line for my blog.

Eventually the time came for bed. And we slept. Hence me writing this blog retroactively.

And so this is where we pause our trek up Mount Olympus, folks.
Bye family!!! 🤚Read more