Zen and the Art of Piracy

According to my calender today is Talk Like a Pirate Day so for all of you mateys out there, "arrrrrr, avast and shiver me timbers! Redistribute the ballast, ye dogs! Hide the rum!" A few years ago my family had a reunion down at Disneyland and we had a great time. Attending were my parents (who also footed the bill for this extravaganza), my brothers and their families and Blair and I with ours. That came out to 9 adults and 7 children. Of course Pirates of the Caribbean was a major priority for the day so when the time came, all 16 of us piled onto the same boat. Now, before you think, so what, you need to know that the shortest person in my family is 5'9" (not including sis-in-laws who are all normal heights.) With the exception of the sis-in-laws and the small children we're, ahem, not small. So here we are climbing into this unfortunate boat, thunk! and situating ourselves when I hear from the back "oops! Better shift the ballast!" That was one of my brother's kind way of saying " we're listing heavily to the port side-redistribute!" Of course that sort of became the theme for the reunion. Dang, I almost felt normal being around my brothers again. I married a man who's shorter than I so for the last 14 years or so I've been the Jolly Pink Giant around his very normal to short sized family. I suppose the enormous weight problem doesn't help my case, either. I prefer to think of it as "Post Childbirth Disaster Figure" which, coincidentally, I am remedying. 12 lbs. down, 56 million to go. Woohoo! Maybe the next time we visit the Magic Kingdom with the entire tribe (now up to 19) we can save the ballast jokes for Mr. Toad's wild ride, savvy?