Thursday, May 11, 2006
Vacations: Aren't They Supposed To Be Relaxing?
The Wife and I have been on numerous vacations together. There's been one constant theme to our vacations: they aren't very relaxing. Usually, we ramble all over a country (or state) and need to decompress when we get home. Now that we have Luke, though, vacations are a lot more stressful. Less travel, but more stress.
We left the Sunday after my graduation. Our flight was at 9:00 am. My mom was kind enough to drive us to the airport. I don't know why she volunteered to do this. It must be some sort of motherly instinct. I'm wondering when The Wife's will kick in. I don't see it happening any time soon. Many thanks to her for doing it though. Because if it weren't for her, we would have done remote parking. And with Luke? It would have been such a pain that Jesus on the cross would say, "Thank Me I'm not them."
(By the way, I can't remember the last time I slept as well as I did Saturday night. After all the stress of having to do the commencement speech, not to mention having to WRITE the speech, Saturday night was just one big relaxation.)
We got into San Francisco around 11:30 (local time) without too much hassle from Luke. Getting to our rental car was an exercise in aggravation. I'll be the first one to admit that I desperately need exercise. But not this kind. First, we had to claim our bags. Since we had Luke in the stroller, we had to take the elevator down to baggage claim (Ride #1). Once we got our bags (which is always the longest, scariest wait in the world), we took the elevator (#2) to the parking garage. There we hiked to another elevator (#3) to take us to the Airtrain. Of course, we had to take another elevator (#4) to get to the actual Airtrain platform. The Airtrain then took us approximately 1000 miles to the rental car facility in Colorado. (Luke was being extremely fussy the whole time, of course.) Once we got to the rental car place, we waited in line for 15 minutes. Then we had to take another elevator #5 to the rental car. I can't describe how relieved I was that we didn't have to get on a shuttle to actually get to my rental car. I think I might have gone all Falling Down on somebody if we did.
The plan for the week was to stay with my brother-in-law in Sacramento. But since he was currently driving back from a bachelor party in Vegas, we had some time to kill. We used that time to catch up with my cousin who lives in San Fran. (They have a child one year older than Luke and just had another a couple months ago, whom I hadn't seen before.) We met up downtown, had lunch and then headed over to their place in Oakland. Luke was quite a trooper, staying up until past 9:00 (Chicago time), a full hour past his bedtime. Of course, he had plenty of toys to steal from his cousins. Yes, Luke is quite the bully when it comes to toys. We're trying to get him to be better about it, but it's hard to reason with a 15-month-old child who understands about 20 words.
(Though, he IS starting to speak some words. So far, he says "No" (way too much, if you ask me), "choo-choo," "shoes," and "keys." It's so cool to see him learning words right now. I must say that I completely underestimated how much fun it would be to have kids. Watching them discover things and seeing the literally learning in front of your eyes is one of the coolest experiences in the world. It's almost as cool as when you get a dog to bring a thrown ball back to you. Or when you get a cat to do anything.)
One of the cool things about visiting my cousin was that I got to see a lemon tree up close and personal. The problem? These lemons didn't look a thing like what I see in the grocery store. Some were the size of softballs. They were all mis-shaped and oddly colored. In fact, I thought they were mangos or some other odd fruit. I had no idea they were lemons. Sadly, my cousin has yet to make lemonade out of the lemons God gave him. (Okay, that's not exactly true. I only assume he hasn't. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if my cousin told his wife, "We HAVE to make lemonade. God gave us the lemons!" In fact, he probably makes lemon marangue pies, enters them in the state fair and wins ribbons. And my only question? Why didn't he have pie waiting for us when we arrived? I LOVE lemon marangue pie, even if I can't spell "marangue.")
Anyway, we eventually made it to Sacramento around 9:00 (11:00 pm Chicago time), even though my Brother-in-Law (BIL) wasn't there yet. Fortunately, his girlfriend let us in. Then we promptly passed out from sheer exhaustion. We stayed at BIL's one-bedroom apartment, and The Wife and I slept on an air mattress. Air mattresses are great, until you have to share one. The problem? Every time one person moves, the other person feels it. This was the only night we shared the air mattress. Marriage is wonderful. Sleeping with my wife is wonderful. (Get your mind out of the gutter!) But actually getting sleep? That's heaven.
On Monday, we chilled around the house. Luke woke up at 4:30 am (local time), causing The Wife and I some stress. Basically, we let him play around while we alternated forcing our eyelids open. I felt like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange where he was forced into rehabilitation. We eventually made it out of the house for brunch. That was followed by a group nap back at BIL's apartment.
After that, we headed over to Historic Sacramento. We walked around and then headed over to a railroad museum. I know that sounds lame, but Luke's new love is trains. He has a train table and 4-5 Thomas the Tank Engine trains that he LOVES. As I mentioned earlier, one of his few words is "choo-choo" and one of the only things that kept him quiet on the plane was his choo-choos. So, we went through the museum. Luke wasn't too interested in the actual trains we saw. After all, they don't have faces on the front of their engines. But when we went upstairs and Luke saw the HUGE train table full of Thomas Trains, he got all excited. It wasn't easy tearing him away. But as all good things must come to an end, so did Luke's fun with the choo-choos.
We then went over to the capital to catch a glimpse of the Governator. Sadly, he wasn't there. But we saw a lot of trees and changed Luke's dirty diaper on the steps of the capital. That was a fun, symbolic moment. After that, we went out to dinner with BIL's girlfriend. Luke was a pill and I had to take him away from the table frequently to keep him entertained. (And to prevent every other diner in the restaurant from shooting me.)
On Tuesday, we headed out first thing in the morning and went to Fairy Tale Town. This was a nice area where we could let Luke run around all day. There were numerous slides and tunnels and other fun things. Of course, he fell down twice REALLY bad, getting quite a shiner and scraping up his face. When people asked what happened, I just told them that he was asking too many questions. Then I glowered at them and shook my fist. (In other words, nobody really asked what happened.)
From there, we took a tour of houses that BIL is considering buying with his girlfriend. They're both radiologists and won't be lacking for money starting in July. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Given what they've put up with for the past 10+ years, they deserve every penny.) These houses were gorgeous. Huge. Almost ridiculously huge. It got to the point where we started wondering what some of the rooms were called. "Is this the office?" "No, that's the office. This must be the study." "No, I think it's the den." "Actually, it says here that it's the library." Sheesh! And what's BIL's only requirement for the house? It has to have a "game room." Basically somewhere he can put a pool table. I'm pretty sure he can fit a pool table in the master bedroom's closet, so that won't be a problem.
Tuesday night, we ate in. (The Wife and I had had enough of Luke's behavior at restaurants.) Then we watched The Constant Gardener. (My review will follow tomorrow probably.) Then we all passed out, me on the couch, The Wife on the air mattress.
On Wednesday, our flight was at 1:00 pm. BIL was heading to the hospital at 7:00 am. We decided to use the intervening time to do a tour of a Jelly Belly factory in between Sacramento and San Francisco. We had to kill some time at a Denny's before the first tour at 9:00 am. But we made the first tour, and it was really cool. We got to see how jelly beans are made. Of course, The Wife kept asking all sorts of dorky questions of me. You see, she's an engineer, so she's a dork by nature. (Not that I can talk. I'm a former actuary, for God's sake. In fact, we frequently have Dork-Offs in our house to determine who's the bigger dork. I still haven't figured out whether its better to win or lose.) Anyway, The Wife kept asking all sorts of questions about their processes and their equipment and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Who knew there was sugar in jelly beans?"
We got out of the tour around 10:00 and then high-tailed it to San Francisco to catch our flight. The Wife's goal was to make it to the airport around 11:00. My goal was to make it there sometime around 12:00. For some reason, The Wife wanted to get there with enough time to return our car, check our bags, go to the bathroom, change Luke, eat lunch, get food for Luke, and board the plane. The nerve of some people! We caught some traffic and got to the airport a little late, causing The Wife much stress. We got to the gate on time, though, so The Wife got to relax for about 10 minutes. Then we were stuck on an airplane with a fussy child. And we had to taxi for 40 minutes before we even got to take off. Luke was not pleased.
Finally, we were picked up at O'hare by my mother-in-law. Again, the motherly instincts kicked in. Many thanks to her, to my mom, to BIL and his girlfriend for entertaining us this week, to everyone on our flights for not killing us or Luke when he screamed, to Jelly Belly for all the wonderful treats, and to California in general for all the great weather. And now I have only 1 more day of "vacation" until I have to start working full-time again. Hopefully it's enough time to decompress from our family trip, which I will no longer refer to as a "vacation."
We left the Sunday after my graduation. Our flight was at 9:00 am. My mom was kind enough to drive us to the airport. I don't know why she volunteered to do this. It must be some sort of motherly instinct. I'm wondering when The Wife's will kick in. I don't see it happening any time soon. Many thanks to her for doing it though. Because if it weren't for her, we would have done remote parking. And with Luke? It would have been such a pain that Jesus on the cross would say, "Thank Me I'm not them."
(By the way, I can't remember the last time I slept as well as I did Saturday night. After all the stress of having to do the commencement speech, not to mention having to WRITE the speech, Saturday night was just one big relaxation.)
We got into San Francisco around 11:30 (local time) without too much hassle from Luke. Getting to our rental car was an exercise in aggravation. I'll be the first one to admit that I desperately need exercise. But not this kind. First, we had to claim our bags. Since we had Luke in the stroller, we had to take the elevator down to baggage claim (Ride #1). Once we got our bags (which is always the longest, scariest wait in the world), we took the elevator (#2) to the parking garage. There we hiked to another elevator (#3) to take us to the Airtrain. Of course, we had to take another elevator (#4) to get to the actual Airtrain platform. The Airtrain then took us approximately 1000 miles to the rental car facility in Colorado. (Luke was being extremely fussy the whole time, of course.) Once we got to the rental car place, we waited in line for 15 minutes. Then we had to take another elevator #5 to the rental car. I can't describe how relieved I was that we didn't have to get on a shuttle to actually get to my rental car. I think I might have gone all Falling Down on somebody if we did.
The plan for the week was to stay with my brother-in-law in Sacramento. But since he was currently driving back from a bachelor party in Vegas, we had some time to kill. We used that time to catch up with my cousin who lives in San Fran. (They have a child one year older than Luke and just had another a couple months ago, whom I hadn't seen before.) We met up downtown, had lunch and then headed over to their place in Oakland. Luke was quite a trooper, staying up until past 9:00 (Chicago time), a full hour past his bedtime. Of course, he had plenty of toys to steal from his cousins. Yes, Luke is quite the bully when it comes to toys. We're trying to get him to be better about it, but it's hard to reason with a 15-month-old child who understands about 20 words.
(Though, he IS starting to speak some words. So far, he says "No" (way too much, if you ask me), "choo-choo," "shoes," and "keys." It's so cool to see him learning words right now. I must say that I completely underestimated how much fun it would be to have kids. Watching them discover things and seeing the literally learning in front of your eyes is one of the coolest experiences in the world. It's almost as cool as when you get a dog to bring a thrown ball back to you. Or when you get a cat to do anything.)
One of the cool things about visiting my cousin was that I got to see a lemon tree up close and personal. The problem? These lemons didn't look a thing like what I see in the grocery store. Some were the size of softballs. They were all mis-shaped and oddly colored. In fact, I thought they were mangos or some other odd fruit. I had no idea they were lemons. Sadly, my cousin has yet to make lemonade out of the lemons God gave him. (Okay, that's not exactly true. I only assume he hasn't. But it wouldn't surprise me in the least if my cousin told his wife, "We HAVE to make lemonade. God gave us the lemons!" In fact, he probably makes lemon marangue pies, enters them in the state fair and wins ribbons. And my only question? Why didn't he have pie waiting for us when we arrived? I LOVE lemon marangue pie, even if I can't spell "marangue.")
Anyway, we eventually made it to Sacramento around 9:00 (11:00 pm Chicago time), even though my Brother-in-Law (BIL) wasn't there yet. Fortunately, his girlfriend let us in. Then we promptly passed out from sheer exhaustion. We stayed at BIL's one-bedroom apartment, and The Wife and I slept on an air mattress. Air mattresses are great, until you have to share one. The problem? Every time one person moves, the other person feels it. This was the only night we shared the air mattress. Marriage is wonderful. Sleeping with my wife is wonderful. (Get your mind out of the gutter!) But actually getting sleep? That's heaven.
On Monday, we chilled around the house. Luke woke up at 4:30 am (local time), causing The Wife and I some stress. Basically, we let him play around while we alternated forcing our eyelids open. I felt like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange where he was forced into rehabilitation. We eventually made it out of the house for brunch. That was followed by a group nap back at BIL's apartment.
After that, we headed over to Historic Sacramento. We walked around and then headed over to a railroad museum. I know that sounds lame, but Luke's new love is trains. He has a train table and 4-5 Thomas the Tank Engine trains that he LOVES. As I mentioned earlier, one of his few words is "choo-choo" and one of the only things that kept him quiet on the plane was his choo-choos. So, we went through the museum. Luke wasn't too interested in the actual trains we saw. After all, they don't have faces on the front of their engines. But when we went upstairs and Luke saw the HUGE train table full of Thomas Trains, he got all excited. It wasn't easy tearing him away. But as all good things must come to an end, so did Luke's fun with the choo-choos.
We then went over to the capital to catch a glimpse of the Governator. Sadly, he wasn't there. But we saw a lot of trees and changed Luke's dirty diaper on the steps of the capital. That was a fun, symbolic moment. After that, we went out to dinner with BIL's girlfriend. Luke was a pill and I had to take him away from the table frequently to keep him entertained. (And to prevent every other diner in the restaurant from shooting me.)
On Tuesday, we headed out first thing in the morning and went to Fairy Tale Town. This was a nice area where we could let Luke run around all day. There were numerous slides and tunnels and other fun things. Of course, he fell down twice REALLY bad, getting quite a shiner and scraping up his face. When people asked what happened, I just told them that he was asking too many questions. Then I glowered at them and shook my fist. (In other words, nobody really asked what happened.)
From there, we took a tour of houses that BIL is considering buying with his girlfriend. They're both radiologists and won't be lacking for money starting in July. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Given what they've put up with for the past 10+ years, they deserve every penny.) These houses were gorgeous. Huge. Almost ridiculously huge. It got to the point where we started wondering what some of the rooms were called. "Is this the office?" "No, that's the office. This must be the study." "No, I think it's the den." "Actually, it says here that it's the library." Sheesh! And what's BIL's only requirement for the house? It has to have a "game room." Basically somewhere he can put a pool table. I'm pretty sure he can fit a pool table in the master bedroom's closet, so that won't be a problem.
Tuesday night, we ate in. (The Wife and I had had enough of Luke's behavior at restaurants.) Then we watched The Constant Gardener. (My review will follow tomorrow probably.) Then we all passed out, me on the couch, The Wife on the air mattress.
On Wednesday, our flight was at 1:00 pm. BIL was heading to the hospital at 7:00 am. We decided to use the intervening time to do a tour of a Jelly Belly factory in between Sacramento and San Francisco. We had to kill some time at a Denny's before the first tour at 9:00 am. But we made the first tour, and it was really cool. We got to see how jelly beans are made. Of course, The Wife kept asking all sorts of dorky questions of me. You see, she's an engineer, so she's a dork by nature. (Not that I can talk. I'm a former actuary, for God's sake. In fact, we frequently have Dork-Offs in our house to determine who's the bigger dork. I still haven't figured out whether its better to win or lose.) Anyway, The Wife kept asking all sorts of questions about their processes and their equipment and blah blah blah. Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Who knew there was sugar in jelly beans?"
We got out of the tour around 10:00 and then high-tailed it to San Francisco to catch our flight. The Wife's goal was to make it to the airport around 11:00. My goal was to make it there sometime around 12:00. For some reason, The Wife wanted to get there with enough time to return our car, check our bags, go to the bathroom, change Luke, eat lunch, get food for Luke, and board the plane. The nerve of some people! We caught some traffic and got to the airport a little late, causing The Wife much stress. We got to the gate on time, though, so The Wife got to relax for about 10 minutes. Then we were stuck on an airplane with a fussy child. And we had to taxi for 40 minutes before we even got to take off. Luke was not pleased.
Finally, we were picked up at O'hare by my mother-in-law. Again, the motherly instincts kicked in. Many thanks to her, to my mom, to BIL and his girlfriend for entertaining us this week, to everyone on our flights for not killing us or Luke when he screamed, to Jelly Belly for all the wonderful treats, and to California in general for all the great weather. And now I have only 1 more day of "vacation" until I have to start working full-time again. Hopefully it's enough time to decompress from our family trip, which I will no longer refer to as a "vacation."
