gotjenkins.com

For reference: to achieve the proper effect, you can’t just say ‘Tequila Boom Boom’ in a normal tone of voice. You’ve got to shout it loud, with the biggest fake texas asshole cowboy accent you can muster, and really emphasize the BOOM BOOM!.

Tequila Boom Boom is a shitty drink, but Tequila BOOM BOOM! is a person. From Texas. And he’s an asshole, so I guess it all works out.

We left memorial day weekend to go to Mexico – more specifically, Playa Del Carmen – for our ‘last’ family vacation. The way see it, everyone has graduated, and this was pretty much our last chance to all get time off together before we all start moving out and starting our own families and lives. So there were eight of us – two to a room: Mom & Dad. Kelly & Craig, Christine & Matt, and me and Steve.

So, we flew to Mexico Saturday afternoon, got settled in at the hotel that night, and spent a week on vacation.

Saturday we check in at the resort, put up our things, and go for dinner and some drinks. Dinner was pretty good – this place did a really good job with their buffet style restaurants (not so much on the specialty restaurants, but more on that later.) After sweating two or three gallons getting used to the heat (yeah, even at night) and eating, we went to the resort bar to check out the drinking arrangements.

Me and steve walk up to the bar (pretty much everyone else went to bed) and before I could even order anything, an obviously drunk and slightly primate looking guy comes up and shouts real loud to me ‘YOU! AMIGO! YOU GOTTA DO A TEQUILA BOOM BOOM WITH ME!’

I don’t drink tequila, so naturally I don’t know what a tequila boom boom is. So I say what any like-minded person would say – ‘Sure, I’ll have one… but what the fuck is a tequila boom boom?’

‘Oh well it’s tequila and sprite and something something DUDE’

Well what the hell, order me one. I waited for a minute or two, and he was still at the bar fucking around, so I just walked away. He probably forgot about it. He has this really great habit of calling everyone AMIGO while he’s in mexico. The patrons, his friends, the bartenders, et cetera. He always talks really loudly, treats all of the staff with a bad attitude, and walks around like he owns the place.

Later on, as me and Steve sat on the beach drinking and bullshitting, we saw him passed out in the sand.

Sunday morning, me and Steve wake up and head down to the breakfast buffet. Everything was all inclusive, so all we had to pay for was tips and souvenirs. It’s raining. It rained pretty much every day, with varying intensity. Some days had severe thunderstorms, some days just had clouds and sprinkles, but every day had at least some rain.

Let’s go ahead and set the pace for this whole week right now: We meet up with Dad while we’re walking to the breakfast buffet, and we have to go down some steps. There are steps – about 3 of them – and there’s a little ramp that the bellboys use for moving luggage carts. So it’s raining, and you’re wearing sandals, and you come to some steps and a ramp. What do you do?

Well, if you’re my dad you take the ramp. Don’t ask why; I still don’t know. He walks down the ramp, and when he gets to the bottom he slips. It was as quick as a flash, but it was absolutely the longest flash you’ve ever experienced. It’s like in a drama or crime show when someone important gets shot and you watch him fall to the ground in slow motion, unable to do anything.

Anyway, next thing we know, his feet are in the air, his ass is on the ground, and the momentum smacks his head right into the concrete. We help him up and he’s bleeding pretty much everywhere. After helping him to the hotel infirmary (he swore he was fine, but we took him anyway) he had to get three stitches.

My dad had to get stitches in mexico. Three of them. And honest to god, he had to get these stitches in a little dark room that I wouldn’t have been comfortable eating lunch in.

The rest of the day he couldn’t get his head wet, which is really a bummer for him seeing as he loves the ocean.

There’s more vacation stories coming, but here’s some food for thought in the interim: The “doctor” told him that after that day, he could swim in the ocean but couldn’t get his head wet in the hotel pool. Think about that – kind gross, isn’t it?

We had to do something hard this week: Rascal (affectionately nicknamed ‘ferrito’,) our oldest ferret and newest addition to the clan, had to be put to sleep.

It’s sad – he’s the first pet that I’ve ever had to put to sleep. I never had pets as a kid, so this was the first time. He’s been riddled with health problems for quite some time now. When we first adopted him, he had an enlarged spleen and was always a little, uh, explosive when it came to the litterbox.

Recently, we took him to the vet as it seemed like he was losing weight and his litterbox problems seemed to be getting much worse. The vet put him on some medicines, including an antibiotic, prednizone, and pepcid ac. She also determined that he probably had insulinoma, which was basically a tumor on his pancreas resulting in critically low blood sugar. He had a few low sugar crashes, and we had to snap him out of it with karo syrup more than once, but otherwise he seemed like he was getting better. The medicine worked great and within a few days his litterbox issues were under control.

But then the bizarre happened – a week after the vet visit, he suddenly became totally paralyzed in his rear legs, also meaning that he had no bladder/bowel control. We moved him to the pet carrier where we could keep him from hurting himself (the ferret cage is multi-leveled and over 6 feet tall) and took him back to the vet. She said that there could be half a dozen different things that could be causing it, but at long as he was acting like our ferret (stealing tennis balls and try to run away) we should continue to work with him. We did – for a long time, he would still steal tennis balls from us, and try to run away, scooting his little ferrity ass behind him as he tried to run.

We had to clean him up about 3 or so times per day, and give him some clean bedding each time, but he was doing OK. I left for our family vacation to Mexico the last week of May, and Laura took care of him while I was gone. When I came back I could tell something was different. Not only had he lost a huge amount of weight – he was seriously nothing but skin and bones – but he was weakening, he was tired, and he wasn’t happy. We couldn’t get him to eat his food, eat his treats, or even steal a tennis ball, and that’s how we knew it was time. A few days later we took him out to the vet and had the little fella put to sleep.

It was sad, but it was time to do it, and everyone knew it.

This picture is the reason why Laura was able to convince me to adopt Rascal & Kylie:

Come on, look at the melon on that guy! It’s huge! Not to mention the ferrett pot belly… Rascal was our gentle giant – you didn’t have a choice – you HAD to like him!