Gender Bonding

Ugh. Mr. E SO owes me. Two soccer games in rain and wind, and 50-degree weather. Brrrrr. Mr. E gets back today from his guys' weekend at the ocean.

Most husbands around here take a week or a long weekend and go fishing or hunting with their buddies. Ever since they were old enough to drive, Mr. E and friends go for a long weekend and play games. I'm not talking Monopoly, here, or even poker. These are brainy strategy games they don't carry at Target or Toys R Us. Like Torres, Ticket to Ride, and Puerto Rico.

It started as a weekend getaway at a friend's parents' vacation house, moved to another, then out to a rented house at Ocean Shores, then to Moclips, and now to a friend's house near Ocean Shores. They used to eat Cheetos and Squirt, and breakfast was Cap'n Crunch cereal. Sometime in their mid-thirties, they came home feeling so sick, they decided they couldn't do that anymore, and have since substituted real food, except for the Squirt. No heavy drinking (no drinking at all until quite recently). No chasing girls. It was in our "marriage contract" that he would go on this outing with his friends once a year. I suppose I'd rather he did that than some other "entertainments" men find to do.

When they moved the weekend to the ocean, they started building sand castles. Nothing artistic. Put together a civil engineer, a contractor, and hand shovels to four other guys, and they build a fortress. Their goal: to keep the tide back for as long as possible. They start early, because it has to be finished before high tide. Sometimes they're so successful, parts of the fort are still around the next day, but they don't like that. Someone might damage their car driving around on the beach at night.

It's my turn for a girls' weekend next!