We spent the fourth in Burlington, Vermont. We chose to go away for this particular weekend because the Loverpants Family is usually left slapping our hands together like seals ARF ARF ARFING for an invitation to someone's backyard barbecue...so this year, we made our own party, and we had one of the best trips Loverpants and I have ever made. ***

One night we were tooling around the parks along Lake Champlain and we had to pull a U-ey and Loverpants said, "Dead End." Baby Girl, aka Pete and Repeat in the Back Seat cried DEAD END. At any point the rest of the weekend when there was a dull roar, Baby Girl would cry DEAD END! It got to be near slapstick humor (you had to be there) and I think it was an appropriate theme.

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I had been feeling backed up, pent up, cordoned off, completely at a dead end for the entire month of June. My dad visited, I graduated and then...and then I washed a sink full of dishes ad infinitum. Every day was gray skies and rain. Summer in Boston would not begin. Failure to Launch. I found myself hen-pecking Loverpants for the smallest, most stupid things. Even Baby Girl was getting a little ornery, and believe me when I say I am glad that child is restricted to phrases like DEAD END because otherwise I know she would be saying, "Ma? Another day of pretending the tupperware is my lunchbox and I'm working at a construction site? Seriously? Yeah, NO."

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There was no traffic in Burlington. There was no bitterness from baristas, no loud neighbors shagging and yelling angrily and yelling angrily while shagging from upstairs. There was an indoor pool in our hotel, there was new tupperware and a new mock construction site in our suite, and there were new smiles to behold from my daughter, and new laughs to have with my husband, and new skies over new bodies of water to gather for my own collection of vistas.

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