Hey, Manager Mom! The economy’s in the crapper, your 401K is down by 20%, and companies like yours are laying people off left and right! So, what are you gonna do?
I’m going to Disneyworld!
Yep, with my usual impeccable timing, I managed to schedule this trip to happen right when the stock market is dropping faster than virgins on prom night. (Also a great time to ask people to donate to disadvantaged kids' educational projects in this 2008 Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge contest I’m participating in.)
Six months ago, I was trying to figure out kennel coverage for Spawn over the October school closings. There were three days we’d have to cover around the Columbus day holiday. Using my best George Bush math based on the going vacation day program rate of $100/per kid/per day, I somehow convinced myself that it make more financial sense for us to just go to Orlando instead.
We waited to tell Spawn until a week ago because I didn’t want the trip to become one more thing that I threaten for punishment (e.g. “if you don’t start behaving RIGHT NOW we won’t go to Disneyworld after all!”) and then never follow through on, further undermining my limited credibility. Also I didn’t think I could take hearing “WhenarewegoingtoDisneyworld?” twenty times a day for the next six months.
(Not to worry, they found many other subjects to Rain Man about instead).
But when we finally broke the news, their reaction was NOT what I was expecting. In fact, The Boy started crying.
“I don’t want to break my arm!”
Of course, I had forgotten that their friend Caitlin broke her arm on one of the rides when she went last year.
And now that we're here, the excitement level is still on the mild side, somewhere between yellow and orange. I’m slightly annoyed that Spawn has as of yet failed to acknowledge the full extent of my awesomeness for planning this trip.
But we’re heading out to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party tonight. The Boy is dressing as Anakin Skywalker. The Girl is dressing up as an artist. I think once we hit the pearly gates I might finally get some props.
And trying to look on the bright side…maybe the shitty economy means we won’t have to wait in long lines.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Come Smell The Magic!
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
I'll Take Manhattan
This weekend, Manager Dad and I wanted to give Spawn an end-of-summer last hurrah by planning a weekend activity that was more fun than our usual trip to Costco. I have a friend who lives in New York City who was going to be out of town, and she very nicely (although I am pretty sure I saw fear in her eyes) agreed to let us stay in her apartment.
With the free place to stay, I thought we could do a weekend on the (sort of) cheap, but I must have been smoking something because as anyone with half a brain cell can tell you, Manhattan is not known for its great bargains. Everything we wanted to eat, see, or do cost a minimum of eighteen dollars per person. We probably could have stayed home and bought a used Toyota Corolla for less money.
But if Mastercard is to be believed, you can't put a price on family memories, and I was determined to expose Spawn to some legendary New York attractions. So naturally, first on the list was to sample authentic regional cuisine at a Times Square tourist trap themed restaurant. According to Us Weekly, Brad and Angelina took all five hundred of their kids to a place called "Mars 2112," and they're all worldly and shit, so if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me. They start your 'experience' by stuffing you into a sort of elevator pod thing which simulates a rocket ride to outer space:
The Girl: (cackling) THIS is the coolest restaurant EVER.
The Boy: (terrified) I think we are really blasting off into space. (Grabs both of my ears and shouts directly into my nostrils). DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE ON MARS! I PROMISE TO BEHAVE FROM NOW ON!
The Girl: (turning green) Actually, I think I am going to throw up.
We got out of the simulator and The Boy spotted the costumed 'aliens', which made him completely unhinged, so he spent the entire meal in a state of panic, hiding under the table whenever any of the waitstaff even LOOKED in our general direction. We wound up throwing away most of Spawn's $15-a-plate dinners because the pasta was "too slimy" and the sauce "too chunky." After that, we gave up on restaurants and fed them a diet of bread, bottled water, and bananas, just like the monkeys at the Central Park Zoo.
We did a double-decker bus tour, although we had to de-bus after twenty minutes due to kid boredom and the absence of bathrooms. A pedicab bike tour through Central Park was a lot more successful, although it wasn't quite as much fun for the kid that was biking us around. Between the screeching of the bike's gears and the pained expression on his face, it was clear that he regretted offering to take all four of us in a cab built to safely carry MAYBE two people, and even then only if those two people were Kate Moss and Keira Knightley.
Hands down, Spawn's favorite part of the trip was shopping. We gave them each a $20 budget, which lasted about fifteen seconds at their "retailtainment" stores of choice: American Girl and the Pokemon section of the Nintendo store. Even I was excited about the Nintendo store because they had a stash of Wii Fits*, which I'd been dropping hints about as a potential birthday present ever since we got the evil Wii in the first place.
So thanks to the magic of capitalism, the trip was a smashing success. Spawn had so much fun that The Girl cried the entire train ride home because she didn't want to leave the city.
And now, back to reality, and the new school year, which starts Friday. I'd like to give a special middle finger shoutout to our local Board of Education. Thank you so very much for making the first day of school the DAY BEFORE the Labor Day holiday weekend.
*Warning: Do NOT subject yourself to the Wii Fit unless you have very high self esteem, and/or have been drinking. I took the "fit test" and despite the fact that I run 35 miles a week, it began taunting me, first criticizing my my Body Mass Index and then asking me if I trip and fall a lot because it thinks I am uncoordinated. But the kicker was when it loudly announced that my Wii Fit age as SIXTY ONE. I will NEVER hear the end of this from my family.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
A Statistical Analysis of My Post-Vacation Nervous Breakdown
Estimated days it will take to unpack and reassimilate all crap: 3
Percentage of tomato plants that died while we were away: 89%
Hours of unwatched shows on the DVR: 18
Toilets containing week-old unflushed kid pee: 1
Length of unmowed grass: 19 inches tall
Minutes that The Girl cried in the car on the way home: 27
Minutes that Spawn slept in the car: zero
Total pounds gained: 6
Number of digital photos to sort through: 734
Estimated percentage of digital photos that halfway decent: 12%
Unread work emails: 889 (before mailbox went over size limit and shut down)
Weight of unopened mail: 24 pounds
Months it will take to pay off vacation credit card debt: 2.5
Ratio of vacation fun to stressful aftermath: 1:1000
I'll get myself together and write something decent soon, I hope.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
I Had The Time Of My Life
Day three of our vacation. Wish you were here?
It has been raining. Every. Single. Day. With no break in sight.
Being cooped up and forced to endure relentless family togetherness has sparked escalated levels of intra-Spawn violence, which, while irritating, at least gets them good and tired. So last night, exhaustion mixed with pathological boredom caused them to pass out early, opening up a rare opportunity for us to make progress towards meeting our recommended annual quota of marital orgasms.
But we needed to stall for a bit to make sure the early bedtime was going to stick. The house we're renting has a DVD player and a random assortment of movies, so I asked MD to pick one that might put us in the mood. But I guess I need to work on my communcation skills because he picked Escape From New York. While this may not be quite as erotic as my FAVORITE porn-ish film, I CAN say that a young Kurt Russell manhandling a massive penis substitute gun and sporting an oddly hot mullet and vintage 1980s fetishwear DEFINITELY gave me a few ideas in the fantasy role-playing area:
ROMANCE FORECAST: Partly aroused, with a 50% chance of intercourse
Things were looking promising when The Girl had a nightmare and woke up in hysterics. Two slices of toast and a chapter of “Diary of A Wimpy Kid” later, we finally got her settled down. But MD and I needed something to get us back on the road to freakin', so I put on a movie that I hadn't seen for twenty years, but that I remembered as being the SEXIEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME. And all I have to say is that nobody puts Baby in a corner and anyone with half of an ovary will know that I am talking, of course, about Dirty Dancing.
Unfortunately, watching this again WITHOUT the benefit of raging seventeen-year-old hormones, it is painfully evident that this movie completely blows. I was trying to delude myself into thinking that MD didn't notice when he turned toward me, gazed deeply into my eyes, and murmured throatily, “I don’t think I’ve evern in my life watched a bigger steaming pile of crap,” and I could actually SEE his testestosterone level dropping.
ROMANCE FORECAST: Mostly emasculated, with sub-zero temperatures.
But then we opened a bottle of wine, and had a few good laughs about our idiotic teenage years, and well, since my own favorite movies usually end on an ambiguous note (think Blade Runner or The Matrix), I'll just end this right now and let you invent the ending that you find most satisfying.
Overall Probability of Vacation Sex: Undisclosed
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Big Ben! Parliament!
Scene from The Manager household earlier today:
4:00 A.M. The Boy enters our bedroom, fully dressed and teeth brushed, wearing backpack full of toys and clutching Transformers action figure in each fist. Announces loudly that he’s ready to leave for vacation.
4:01 Manager Dad leads him back into his room and stuffs him back into bed, still fully clothed.
6:00 Alarm goes off. MD goes downstairs and circles mountain of luggage like a wary lion trying to fell a water buffalo. Begins loading car while Spawn toss random last-minute must-bring items onto the pile.
6:22 Head to Dunkin Donuts to procure trip rations.Finish first 24oz coffee in under 2 minutes; return to Dunkin Donuts for seconds.
6:40 Car packed; last-minute walkthrough of the house sparks meltdown when The Boy spots the Wii and is told that it's not coming with us.
7:00 Family in car, ready to depart.
7:01 The Girl requests a bathroom stop.
7:05 Leave driveway.
7:06 The Boy requests a bathroom stop. Return to house.
7:09 Leave driveway for the second time.
7:13 Get within twenty feet of the parkway on-ramp. Crisis erupts as The Girl discovers that her bagel has the wrong flavor cream cheese. Manager Dad turns the car around and heads back to Dunkin Donuts for bagel exchange.
7:22 Finally get on the parkway. Despite the bagel swap, The Girl decides that cream cheese "tastes funny". Boy refuses to eat his own bagel in a show of solidarity. Pass out granola bars and Smartfood.
7:26 Snack stash completely decimated. Spawn still hungry. Pass out gum and Tic Tacs.
7:27 First "Are we there yet?" Source child unknown.
7:29 The Boy requests another bathroom stop. No exits for twenty miles. MD pulls car over to shoulder and takes him on a nature hike.
7:31 Fight breaks out over which movie to put on the DVD player. "Alvin and the Chipmunks" beats "Underdog". Somewhere in Hollywood, Jason Lee cashes a fat royalty check while wearing an evil grin.
7:35 Sound of chipmunk singing causes me to repeatedly stab myself in the ears with plastic bagel knife.
7:36 Loud sobbing is heard; realize it's coming from me.
Only five more hours until we reach our destination.
Family vacation time. To improve the entertainment value of any other posts I might wring from my remaining brain cells, please Fedex survival kits containing sunscreen, booze, and National Enquirers to my attention, care of Pondsea House, Peaks Island, Maine.
