Deep Revelations from Vacation

There isn’t much worse than returning home from vacation, is there? I promise, soon I will stop talking about vacation. How annoying it is that everything is all about my vacation? Instead of posting about my vacation all week long, forcing me to sob at my desk while I return to reality, I figured I’d wrap up the whole vacation in this post. Save for the stories about the security checkpoint and the toe-cracker incident, which totally deserve their own posts at a later date.

With that lame introduction, I present the top three things I learned on vacation.



First, Kate is a fantastic traveler. To counteract her Tasmanian Devil tendencies, all she needs is an airplane to turn into a perfect little Shirley Temple. Maybe it’s the cabin pressure. Note to self: find a way to simulate said pressure on an ongoing basis. Her favorite parts of the flight were TAKE-OFF, LANDING, and TURBULANCE. If I didn’t know that this child was surgically extracted from my uterus, I’d use this as proof that she certain does not have my DNA.



Second, apparently some obscure memorandum was issued to select mothers advising them that allowing their child to PEE in the SAND at a public beach is permissible. I was omitted from that mailing list, but the family next to us on Sanibel Island apparently was not. I can appreciate the immediate urgency to locate facilities for a potty-trained toddler who needs to pee NOW, and may even grant a poor mother a courtesy pass in those circumstances. I do not appreciate the indolent mother who instructs her children to “go” before they start playing and even if they don’t have to that they should “at least try.” That activity was followed up by a directive to cover it up with sand. I expected the catnip and Fancy Feast to follow.



Third, it is not advisable to wait until you feel like you are getting burned before you apply sunscreen. Nothing good will come of that approach. It is even less advisable if you are of Scandinavian decent and are so pale-white that you border on translucent. Retuning to taunts of “Powder” and “Albino” despite having been in a sunny climate are preferable to having skin so irritated that walking around without any clothes on in a public place almost sounds like a logical solution. Additionally, if someone had offered to sever my sunburned feet off with a dull butter knife last night, I would have entertained the idea because it certainly would have been LESS PAINFUL.



Now please excuse me while I mourn vacation and apply some more Aloe Vera.