The Wheels Are Coming Off

Today is not a good day. Bad things happened.

One of them, is the announcement that the Wheels Inn in Chatham will be closing and turning into a Holiday Inn.

So sad. As a child (and as a grown woman) I have spent may a wonderful day in Chatham and some of my best hotel memories have to do with stays at the Wheels Inn.

I remember staying there with my grandparents, turning off all the lights and in our room, announcing that it was bedtime (yes, my oldest child tendencies emerging) and promptly face planting into the carpet as I tried to make my way to the bed.

I remember watching a screaming Annie zooming down the water slide (the one on the left!) with a look of such terror it is ingrained in my brain forever.

I remember the Wild Zone, the ball room and the home made photo albums that Mags and I made after a birthday weekend stay at the Wheels Inn when we turned 8 and 6 (or 7 and 5).

So sad. I'll miss the mini putt complete with the gorilla you putted the ball into at the 18th hole. I'll miss the smell of chlorine and the wonderful Chatham memories.

Maybe we should all take vacations to Chatham until July 1st just to show them how cool that little place is.

We're Gonna Miss Ya, Kinda

Things we'll miss about you, Gov. Palin...

Folksy mannerisms
Your pronunciations (lack of) your Rs
Your "experience"
Your unnerving mis-education about the Bush Doctrine
Your laws that require rape victims to purchase their own rape kits
Your fucking insane stance on the abortion issue
Your weird winking
Your spending
Tina Fey
Your aversion to pronouncing the letter "g" at the end of words
How you have forever changed what a "Maverick" is
Your destruction of McCain's reputation
Your wardrobe
Your ethics, or lack there of
You mentioning "Main Street" every g-d second
The way you combine people's first name, "the" and their profession (classic!)
The way you bash community organizers (F U)
Your subtle evocations of the ever thoughtful chant of "Drill Baby, Drill"
Pageant jokes
Trying to pass off a part time job as mayor to a town of 9,000 as true experience
Teen pregnancies
Your sentences to Nowhere
Helicopter hunting for the continental US
You're roguish ways
Any interviews you have ever done
Seeing you meet the real Nicholas Sarkozy for the first time
Forced teen marriage
You trying to make the beluga extinct
You checking on Russia every morning from your kitchen window

But most of all I will miss...um...hang on...um...oh yeah.

Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

Don't let the door hit you on your ass on the way back to Alaska!