I've just been on vacation. And reprioritizing my time (as in enjoying my last weeks of playtime with Henry before school starts).
But the following will begin my recap of my most recent vacation...I wrote it en route to the beach.
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Still full from the previous night’s 6th Anniversary dinner extraordinaire—Fried Green Tomato Beignets, Filet Mignon wrapped in Applewood smoked bacon, Grilled asparagus, and Bananas Foster, and oh, yeah, a bottle of Veauve Cliquot—this morning began wonderfully. I awoke super excited about the summer’s last hurrah—our family vacation to Litchfield. Weren’t we just at the beach, you ask? Yes. But it was a last minute vacay planned with the in-laws and so Sloan had to work the week and was gone on business for three days of it. And let’s just say it’s not really a vacation if you can’t burp in front of your fellow vacationers. (I did not blog about that trip in order to protect the guilty, err, me.) And to add to the excitement (or insanity, depending upon how you look at it), we invited 2 of my sister’s kids to join in on the fun. That’s right, we intentionally added a seven year old and another 3 year to the mix. It is either pure genius or pure lunacy…I’ll let you know in a week.
I’ve spent the last week rewashing all our bathing suits and beach towels, packing snacks, making lists and checking them twice. Seriously. Lots of lists. On post-it notes. Typed and printed. On the backs of napkins and receipts as I thought of things. We’ve got snacks, games, sticker books, toys, stuffed animals, loveys, blankets, a mattress (for the pack and play), bottles, candy, formula, baby food, pull-ups, diapers, no less than 15 trains, sand toys, pillows, and sunscreen. I even packed it neatly so that it all fit into our car with the third row in without interfering with looking out the back window.
My sister arrived with Jonathan and Isabel around 8:45. Our goal was to leave around 9 so that we’d arrive at the beach around 3. Plenty of time to hit the grocery store, unpack, and still get to the pool and lazy river. As we were putting in the kids booster seats, we learned that 2 full back boosters and one backless booster seat do not fit into the third row of a Suburban. We needed to have all three of the big kids in the back row so that we could fold down one of the captain’s chairs for stuff. And for optimal movie viewing. So Sonya and I dashed off to the Target around the corner to get Isabel a backless booster, seeing as she’ll be 4 years old in two weeks anyhow. That’s cool, officer, right? But even with the backless booster, it still takes an act of God and Congress to get all three seats in and buckled. Which makes potty stops a bear. It literally takes fifteen minutes just to wedge the three kids in the back. We will be doing some rearranging once we get to beach. Anywho….
We were finally wheels up around 9:45. No biggie, still time to have a poolside picnic dinner. We decided we’d have lunch in Rocky Mount, NC around 11:45 or so.
Well, you know what they say, right…The best laid plans of mice and men and all that jazz…
We’re barreling down I-95, making pretty good time, the kids are watching Mary Poppins (which my niece Isabel knows all the words to every song, or at least the phonetic corresponding sounds to all the songs…BONUS). Sloan and I are talking about how wonderful the past 6 years have been (because it IS our anniversary), what we want to get at the grocery store, when Sloan suddenly asks, “Hey, did you get the keys?”
“What keys?” I ask.
“The keys to the beach house.”
Oh. My. Gosh.
“Mother Effer!!!!! Are you kidding me? I remembered to pack seven different types of chips and I didn’t pack the damn keys?”
“You really didn’t grab them?”
“No. I really didn’t grab them. Did you?”
“No. I thought about asking about them this morning but got sidetracked by a poopy diaper.”
I am pretty sure by this time my blood pressure was lethal. And the worst of it was that I had no one to blame but myself. And by this time, we’d just crossed into North Carolina. “We’ve got to go back. We’ll need the keys to the owner’s closets and the golf cart.”
We pulled into the nearest rest stop, took the kids in to go to the bathroom, and then struggled to get them strapped back in (a stop that took no less than an additional twenty minutes). I may or may not have told my child to stop whining about having to hold my hand as we crossed the street or I was really going to give him something to whine about. I may or may not have told my son that I just didn’t have the patience to deal with him wanting a juice box because I was the stupidest flipping person on the planet and causing us to have to drive three (really four) hours out of our way. I may or may not have told all three of the children that the week was probably going to be horrible as I had planned it and I am an idiot.
Sloan told me to go sit down as the giant cross on my back was making it difficult to strap the kids in.
So we turned around and headed back home. As we’re driving back to Richmond, the kids start with the how long is it going to be until we get there junk. And at this point, we literally aren’t even going in the direction of the beach. I thought I was going to lose it. Sloan claims that by this point I’d already lost it. Fortunately, Jonathan had an answer to this—“Isabel, don’t ask that. When you start seeing palm trees, then you’ll know we’re near the beach.” Sweet Jon-o-fun.
As we drove home, I stewed in my self-disappointment. Sloan seemed unphased, which honestly, pissed me off. I told him, “I don’t want you to be compassionate. I screwed up. Big time. I want you to be mad at me. I remembered to pack four books for myself, but couldn’t remember to grab the daggone keys.”
“For one, we both forgot the keys. Two, would my being mad at you help? I think you’re mad enough for the both of us. And I don’t think taking it out on the kids is helping the situation, either.”
“Don’t start on me for taking it out on the kids. Does it help you to take it out on us when you have a bad day at work?” I snapped back. Because it is much easier to point out someone else’s flaws instead of dealing with my own.
“Honey, it’s fine. We’re in no rush. We’ll get the keys. We’ll go through some drive thrus. It’ll all get done. Besides, didn’t you say that we forgot to grab Henry’s night-light?”
“Screw the night lights. I made all those dang lists and not once did I write down “Pack keys.” Packing the keys didn’t cross my mind once. What the heck is my problem? I’ve single handedly ruined the first day of our vacation. AND I’m going to have to go the grocery store by myself tonight once the kids are in bed.”
“Well,” Sloan said, “it is going to be difficult to push the cart while simultaneously flogging you. But that seems to be an adequate punishment.”
And this, my friends, is why I married him six years ago. He was able to a) point out my sin in a way that didn’t crush me, and b) make me laugh. Not many people can do this. Sure. I made a mistake. Because I am human. But what really was chapping my hide was the fact that God was serving me a heaping piece of humble pie. But having Sloan for a husband at least made the humble pie a la mode.
It was one o’clock when we pulled back into our driveway. We hit the McDonald’s drive thru on the way back and I climbed back in the back to give Gracie some food and a bottle. The children had already watched the entire movie Mary Poppins before we even left Richmond the second time. We made the kids stay in the car as we did the mad dash for the keys and night-lights.
The entire trip back, I said things like “oh look, there’s the rest stop we peed at when we’d first noticed I’m incompetent,” or “Hmmm, it is the second time today we’ve crossed into North Carolina at precisely the time the Magellan said we’d be getting to the beach the first time around,” or, when passing South of the Border, “Pedro sez who leaves for vacation and forgets the keys.”
The good news of the situation is that McDonald’s has pretty good happy meal toys—Marvel comic figurines for boys and Madame Alexander dolls for girls. And did you know you can buy extra toys for a dollar so your 3 year old girl doesn’t have to share her Dolly with your 10 month old who really only wants to gnaw on it?
So a 6 hour car trip with four kids turned into a ten hour car trip with five kids (I’m including myself in this count). Sloan would probably say that having him be the responsible adult in any situation is problematic, but this time it worked. In total, the kids watched Mary Poppins, Space Chimps, The Princess and the Frog, and G-Force. I rode shotgun in a pool of self-loathing pity typing furiously on my laptop.
It took all of Sunday for me to relax about what a boob I was for forgetting the keys. I probably won’t ever forget them again.
Next time, I’ll probably forget to pack my underwear.
