Vacation. It’s a funny word these days in this house. As parents of three-year olds, my wife and I define vacation as pretty much any time we get to spend alone outside the normal bounds of our daily routine. An occasional dinner, for instance. Or even an overnight somewhere. But the old definition of vacation – taking a trip somewhere for a week or two – doesn’t really apply as a parent. Vacation, in the traditional definition, isn’t really vacation. Things like grocery shopping, mowing the lawn, showering or driving to work become “vacation.” Simply put, vacation for us right now is just parenting somewhere else and hoping beyond hope that everything goes remotely normal.
You hope for “remotely normal” because the odds are pretty much stacked against you. Remotely normal, in fact, would be an enormous win for many parents. Here’s what you’re generally looking at:
- You’re probably going somewhere with less space.
- You have less of their toys and books to use as weapons of mass soothing – you just can’t bring it all unless you’re J-Lo or Julia Roberts.
- Many kids don’t adapt well to a wholesale change in overall environment.
- You’re dealing with multiple three year olds. I shouldn’t have to explain that one, should I?
I am here to tell you that our vacation wasn’t even remotely normal. I can’t, by definition, say it sucked. But I can tell you it wasn’t ideal. But I don’t want to bog you down with all those gory details. Oh hell, yes I do! If I had to deal with it, you do too. It rained pretty much 5 out of 7 days. That was rather evil, as numbers 1 and 2 above were greatly exacerbated by mother nature, that bitch. You were so good to us all summer long and so mean to us on our vacation week. We shake a finger at you. You can pick which one. So the weather didn’t help. It even caused one of us to make a trip home to pick up fall/winter clothes since the temps didn’t get past 65 for 3 of those days.
So yeah, that basically means that all four of those bullets above were operating full steam! That’s not good for anybody, really. The level of exhaustion was pretty dramatic. While we’re on the subject of dramatic, I should also mention how whiny a couple of three year olds can be. I should also mention I am not without fault. Because when you’re dealing with two whiny three-year-olds, you’re definitely getting a whiny 39 year-old as a result. Time doesn’t go by fast enough for anyone when you’re shut in for 3.5 days. At the beach.
OK, now – the good! Yes, there was good! We went to Plum Island, our vacation of choice each year. We just love Plum Island. It’s really an awesome little place. Every year we dream about having our own vacation house there! Anyway, if it rains (and boy did it rain) there are choices for the little ones. So if it wasn’t for the the mass of electric train sets at the Wenham Museum, the tidal pool creatures exhibit at the Joppa Flats, the clean, friendly people at Leo’s Super Bowl in Amesbury, MA or Gram’s in Newburyport, whose ice cream rivals some of the best I’ve had, this “vacation” could very well have been, well, shorter than a week. The sun finally arrived on Thursday and we did get to spend Thursday and Friday outside and at the beach, so it improved a bit, but the WHINING! Good golly gee, man. The whining.
But you know what? We’re going back next year, if only to capture moments like these:
 Zachary free as a bird! Or these:
 Nathan, fly!
and yes…….this, the ubiquitous self-portrait:
 What would my blog be if I wasn't somehow a focus?
 I remember a conversation I had with Steph, maybe a year ago, about what was “next” for me. It started on a plane ride home from a business trip while still working at Ask. I had just gone out to San Francisco to basically fire someone and it affected me. It was without question the right move, but I still didn’t like doing it and it soured me on the corporate style life. Not that Ask.com was terribly corporate, but you get the point. On that plane ride home, I kept asking myself this question: when I look back after retirement, will I be proud of my accomplishments at work? Will I have done something I am proud of?
I had a lot of good moments and pretty big accomplishments at Ask, but I couldn’t bring myself to the answer those questions the way I wanted or needed to. That started me down the path of trying to find something right. Now, I don’t know if one ever finds something completely right. Or, let me rephrase – I could make a pretty solid argument that there is no such thing as the perfect job. I’ll leave that one open to debate.
Back to my conversation with Stephanie – we started riffing about “the perfect job.” One of the things I mentioned was a documentary filmmaker, but not in the traditional sense, like Michael Moore or whatever. My interest in film wasn’t at all about guns in the USA, healthcare© or the Bush presidency. My interest was in your next door neighbor. What is/was their story? I find far more fascination in regular, normal people than I do celebrity, sports players or politicians. Because everyone has a story to tell. So I was sitting on that plane and I opened the airline magazine and read about a woman who had started a business doing just that, but only locally in the state of Arizona. I’d want to do it nationally, I thought. Or maybe globally.
Of course, life takes over as it inevitably does and the soul searching came and went. It came again in February when I committed to Pure Hockey and left Ask. A few months later, here I sit, totally happy with my decision (but still adjusting to a HUGE change across the board), I came across a book that my sister-in-law gave to me called Listening is an Act of Love. I think she gave it to me for Christmas in 2008 but I can’t be sure. I put it in the queue behind the fourteen other books I wanted to read and just in the last few weeks have finally started reading it. I tell you what, it’s a crusher. These are stories of normal people’s lives, as recorded by StoryCorps, the best damn idea I think I’ve ever heard of. StoryCorps travels around the country, setting up audio booths and you just walk in there with a loved one or a friend and talk to them about their life. After you’re done, bingo – you have it on CD, recorded. Forever.
There are so many people, past and present, I’d like to pull into that booth for an hour, let me tell you. So many people.
Anyway, the stories range from run-of-the-mill, entertaining conversation to people who have survived plane crashes to the people who lost loved ones in 9/11. It is very interesting, moving stuff and it proved my theory (not hard to prove) that your neighbor’s life is way more interesting than Lindsey Lohan or Shaun White or whatever tripe is on the cover of People Magazine. You need to read it. Believe me.
Stephanie and I had the rarest of occasions this past Wednesday – 24 hours of free time together. As you may be experiencing yourselves, depending on who is reading this, a period of 24 hours of completely free time happens about as often as Tom Cruise actually being in a movie that is good.
Planning in advance for these things, of course, is useless. We tried to plan two weeks before, but the only day it could possibly work was a day when I had jury duty. The following day would work as well, but how can you book a room at a hotel or plan anything when you’re not sure if you’re going to get called back for a second day of jury duty? Then there was the time we planned an overnight in NYC – and we went! Ah, but there was that little problem of me laying in the bed whole time with the flu. Theres nothing like laying bed having soup for a day or two in nyc. See? Planning these things is useless.
So we rolled the dice and assumed that something would be available the day before or even the day of. I wasn’t as worried about a hotel as Steph was, but then again, Stephanie’s personality is one where she is only truly comfortable when everything is known and planned. That is the way everyone should be, actually, but I’m not wired that way, which probably drives her nuts, the poor thing. I always think that last minute is possible and for hotels at least, we’ve been ok.
But when you get one of these free periods of time, you can sympathize with wanting to make sure everything is planned and happening. I get that.
Anyway, we found a great little hotel called The Copley Square Hotel and other than our absolutely tremendous meal at Stella in the South End, that’s where hunkered down until about 11:30 the next day. We did nothing. NOTHING. Steph slept until 10! I read! We ate. That is about it. I’m not sure we’ve done that since the stork showed up. What a time!
When we checked out, we then visited Flour Bakery, sticking to the South End, and we were not disappointed at all, most especially when we were stuffing our faces with their spectacularly delicious sticky buns. After that it was off to the movies! Are you kidding me? A movie too? We headed off to the Kendall Square Cinema, a place we used to visit quite often when we lived just outside of Davis Square and it was a different world.
The movie of choice was called Please Give, a Katherine Keener, Oliver Platt and Amanda Peet movie about middle age and grasping for reason and satisfaction. It was very very good, much like the remainder of our respite.
By the way, back to Stella – if you’re remotely interested in food, Stella is your place. They put a grilled Halibut over corn/onion/potato salad entree in front of me that hasn’t been equalled anywhere else in years. Seriously. I don’t think I’ve had a better meal in years. So go there.
1. I hope ESPN realizes they have completely jumped the shark now. In the past few years, SportsCenter has become utterly unwatchable, as the sportscasters now focus the show entirely on themselves and how stupid they can make themselves sound. They all think they’re so funny. You ever been to a comedy club in a small city or seen a stand-up comedy show at 1am on some random, shitty cable tv channel? That’s SportsCenter now. Tripe. Why do they all have to be so desperate to be the next Patrick-Olberman phenomenon? This LeBron James business just cements it for them – shark. jumped.
2. Laurel Canyon. The book by this name is the first book I’ve read on the IPad. I am undecided if I will read another one in this. I think it’s awesome for short burst reading like magazines, but maybe not for books. That said, the book itself was a fun read, detailing the wondrous time in the 60s and 70s for that part of California. The stories about Joni Mitchell, CSNY, Jackson Browne, Frank Zappa and so many others who were neighbors there carries the book. If you’re a music and pop culture fan, well worth the read and it won’t take you long.
3. Contact lenses. Last night I played in a hockey game with two contact lenses in my left eye. Why? Because I flubbed installation and it got stuck way up in my eyeball. Due to the never stop nature of my life right now, i simply didn’t have time to try and fish it out, just like I don’t have time to go back and capitalize that “I” back there. I keep thinking I am so ready to just say the hell with it and just get lasik but then I remember – it’s surgery. On. My. Eyeballs. That shit freaks me out man! By the way, the lens presented itself this morning after my shower. Slept with it.
4. It’s getting to be time for very interesting questions from the boys. Tonight I got three doozies: “where did you buy me?” “how come doggies don’t pee out of their tails?” and “how did you make me.” gonna be a fun year.
We kid more than we know about “real life.” I always laugh when I see sitcoms, dramas, or movies on TV where there’s a couple in bed, the sun is starting to peek in because its morning and the couple is wrapped together in a slumbering embrace. They awaken, happy and glorious, staring all googly-eyed at each other. Now, I don’t know about you, but my wife and I can’t last more than two minutes doing this. Sleeping for HOURS in an embrace? I’d be sweating and unbearably hot even with the AC at full tilt. It’s just not possible. And what of comfort? There is, inevitably, a stray arm that is either so numb or in such an uncomfortable position that you’d rather stand in line at the supermarket deli. Real life is this – we don’t face each other when we sleep. No idea why.
We bought a king bed because we figured it was inevitable that the kids, from either sickness or fear of the dark, would be coming into the room. We thought we needed the space. Funny thing happened on the way to bed, though – our kids hate our bed. We should be happy they’re not coming in every night, right? But now we find ourselves talking about how cute it would be if we all slept together! The grass is always greener! Real life.
I haven’t set an alarm for months now. I don’t need to. I have two human alarms that go off just before 6 every day, and lately an internal clock going off at 5 sharp. If I fall back asleep, gravy. But it only happens once every week, if that.
I wonder if there has ever truly been a show or any form of media that depicts sleeping in any real, remotely accurate way?
I’ve learned to accept that some days are shitty. Today, for example. Not a total disaster, but overall not one to put into the archives as a keeper. I gave a presentation at work this morning and I pretty much knew before I uttered the first word that most of the people didn’t care. It’s ok, though. You hope they care, but nobody bats 1.000 giving presentations. Just the way it is. People are just gonna stare and poke at their phones sometimes. Some people were most certainly tuned in, others just weren’t. So it goes. The highlight of the day? I walked into a store playing a Broken Bells song! Now that’s a pick me up, man! Really cool new band, cool new album.
So Wednesdays’s are hockey nights for me. Always good to go get a workout, take my mind off everything for a bit, play hockey, have a beer and a few laughs. The only problem was that the ice was like a pool. Seriously. After the game, I actually was able to wring my socks out - not my hockey socks, my SOCKS that I was wearing under my skates. Shit! Hopefully those skates dry out quickly. Those are the kind of games you just want to pack up your stuff early and pop a beer. Skating in that is like skating in wet cement. After the game my legs literally hurt. Rinks should be fined for that crap.
But you know what? That’s the way it is. I got to wake up with my kids and put them to bed. I got to see the look of joy on their faces when I picked ‘em up at school. And I laughed as we sang “Daddy Sang Bass” at the top of our lungs on the car ride home. There’s your trump card. Nothing better. Makes a shitty day totally acceptable.
I mentioned on Facebook a few weeks back about how I’m really digging this Gaslight Anthem album. The thing is, I can’t figure out if it’s really the second coming of the E-Street Band or one of those terrible ’90s bands like Vertical Horizon. It truly feels like it could go either way. I have some hope – the album is strong and loaded with hooks! And yes, while some of it feels derivative, there’s a feeling in me that it’s real. I know they have a couple of other albums, so I’ll have to check them out, but this album is really full of large sounding, um, anthems. I really really like it.
Listen here.
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