Parenthood should come with a free cattle prod.

Taking kids on vacation is an exercise in endlessly repeating yourself to hustle some child somewhere to do something. If often goes like this:

• First mention (normal volume): Child exhibits no recognition that anything has been said to them.
• Second mention (still normal volume): See first mention.
• Third mention (slightly increased volume): Child’s eyes flicker momentarily. You get the impression that they realize that someone may have mentioned something that might involve them somehow, but it’s not important enough for them to pay attention to.
• Fourth mention (getting in the range of having wife accusing you of yelling): Child finally acknowledges your existence, yet provides little evidence that they have a) understood what you are saying or b) intend to follow through on your request.
• Fifth mention (KISS concert volume): Child acknowledges request, but asserts “One minute.”
• Sixth mention (volume somewhere between Italian family dinner conversation and Saskatchewan Roughriders game): Child finally gets ass in gear, but thinks father is a jerk. Wife is angry at husband for yelling. Father feels bad, yet like he’s getting a bum rap.

Repeat several times every day until you send them away to university or prison.

As you may have gathered from the title, we recently went to Maui. It was awesome. I think it may have even been better than my honeymoon, which might explain how domesticated I have become, but you don’t want to read about what a fantastic time we had. Having me write about the awesome weather and great times is boring. There’s nothing comical about it. To quote Mel Brooks, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” Well, I didn’t see anyone die or walk into sewers, but I figure if I try and draw out the minor misadventures of our trip and then engage in some spin-o-rama then maybe I can make this post entertaining.

The Departure
If you’ve ever seen Deer Hunter or a couple of homage-paying episodes of The Simpsons then you are familiar with the expression “Di Di Mau.” It loosely translates from Vietnamese to “Let’s fucking go!” Both my children are familiar with this expression, although it rarely spurs them to action. Leading up to our vacation my wife had been putting in 16 hour days on a new hardware/software install at her clinic and I was stuck getting pretty much everything ready for our trip.

Yeah, I know. Poor me.

Now because I’m post vacation and feeling fine I can’t really remember everything that was screwed up at the 11^th hour before our trip, but I distinctly recall having the sense that our cab wasn’t going to show up, we were going to miss our flight, our luggage was going to get lost, there would be no record of our car rental or condo booking, the condo would be a cockroach infested shack, and we’d all wakeup the first day of vacation with swine flu.

Amazingly enough, none of the above happened. Our cab showed up right on time at 5:15am with snow on the ground that I was anxious to leave. My daughter was dragging her butt and I was trying to hustle her out the door so we could ditch the frozen wasteland for nine days. She was having difficulties with socks and shoes, which happens to the best of us at that ungodly hour, and I said, “Come on [daughter], di di mau!”

“Yeah,” my son piped in. “Di di Maui!”

The resulting laughter didn’t help us get out the door any faster.

Megan is a Fox
Our first flight was to LAX because Calgary doesn’t start flying direct to Maui for another month. We were on Air Canada and it had the seat back movie thing and I selected Angels and Demons to see if it was as crappy as everyone said it was, and it was. My son was next to me and watched Transformers 2, which I couldn’t tell if it was as crappy as everyone said it was, but I did find myself looking at his screen more and more frequently every time Megan Fox appeared.

She may be an emotionally damaged train-wreck with a butt-ugly forearm tattoo, but I still think she’s a smokin’ hot mega babe.

LAX
Three hour layover with two hyperactive children. You do the math.

The Condo
We stayed at the Aston Maui Hill and it was way nicer than I thought it would be. We got an awesome deal because it was shoulder season and the economy sucks. The only complaint I can make is that the bed was a little hard, but I’m a pansy.

There. I feel like I earned our late checkout.

The Birds
You don’t need an alarm clock in Maui, because every bird in the universe starts going berserk at 6:15am. There is one that makes a hideously loud squawk each morning which prompted my normally non-violent wife to say: “I’m gonna shoot that fucking bird.”

I didn’t mind, as it launched me out of bed for a run most days, which leads us to our next section:

Why Steve Jobs Sucks
One day soon I am going to write a post about how much I hate the design of the new iPod Shuffle. They took a perfectly good product and fucked it up in myriad ways. I thought this before I even left for Maui.

My first day in Maui I was easily awakened by the birds because I was still on MST, but my wife wasn’t getting out of bed that early for anything less than a volcanic eruption or Matt Damon holding a hot fudge sundae, so I pulled on my running gear and headed out the door. I took a left out of our condo complex to head down towards where all the rich people stay and live and discovered a nice running path. Well, it wasn’t exactly designed for running because it was cement rather than asphalt, there were plenty of sharp turns, and I had to dodge a fair number of other early risers, but the view simply could not be beaten. I ran through immaculately manicured grounds of five-star hotels while looking out over white sand beaches and a teal-colored ocean. It was breathtaking.

It was turning into one of those defining runs; the kind where you’re really in tune with life, happiness, the environment, and the joy of being alive.

Then Steve Jobs fucked it all up.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m one of those guys who need to have tunes while running. It was part of what added to the entire experience of this run. The Shuffle seemed to be picking songs that I really wanted to hear as I ran through this beautiful environment. I’d been running for more than half and hour and decided to turn around and head back. I was just thinking about how this was quite likely the most enjoyable run I’d ever had when the Shuffle picked Between the Wheels by Rush. Not only do I love the song, but I think it has one of the greatest guitar solos ever.

As Alex Lifeson started in on his solo I pressed the volume up button on the headphone cable, and then everything went to shit. Rather than the volume going up, it went down. Then I started to hear some asshole voice saying, “Playlist one. All songs” over and over again.

WTF?

I stopped dead in my tracks. I’ll spare you the details, but I buggered with that thing in every way imaginable, and all I could get was a repeat of “Playlist one. All songs.” Now when I set up my new Shuffle I clearly remember turning off that asshole voice. There was a little tick box that asked “Do you want to turn off the asshole voice?” or something, and I clicked it. Yet here I was expecting a righteous guitar solo, and instead of was getting the asshole.

I was pissed.

POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS ALERT!

I was so pissed that, had Steve Jobs been there at that moment, I would have punched him right in the pancreas.

Me. Line. Over.

Anyway, it’s a good thing The Spirit of Radio hadn’t been playing or I’d had taken a detour to Jamaica on the way home and hired some Voodoo lady to put the colon carbuncle curse on Steve.

Can you tell that I think the new iPod Shuffle is a steaming pile of possum pus?

I tried my iPod later that day and it worked fine, but half way through the next day’s run I went to skip past a song and it started to do the same damn thing all over again. I’m kind of slow, so it took me a bit to figure out that the condo’s AC had dried it out and that it was the outdoor humidity that was shorting out the controller on the headphone cable. I never had to worry about my old Shuffle doing things like that. I finally figured out that I could still use it while running in Maui as long as I didn’t want to change volume, songs, or essentially do anything after hitting play as I ran out the door.

Enough whining about that; I’m proud that while on a nine-day vacation I managed 60km worth of running; all of it early in the morning.

Toe Cancer
That’s what it felt like.

On our first day at the beach my son and I did some snorkeling and in the process I wore a small sore in my second toe near the nail bed from wearing flippers for the first time in quite a while. I put a bandaid on and forgot about it for a couple of days, until one night I was awoken after midnight with what felt like an electric shock emanating from said toe.

My body went into a mild convulsion and I muttered, “What the hell?”

“Mmmm?” my wife said.

I tried to ignore it but after the fourth or fifth electro-convulsion my wife said, “What the fuck is your problem?” In her defense, she’s a lovely woman with a usually sunny disposition, but she really doesn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night.

“It’s my toe. It keeps, uh, electrocuting me or something.”

“It’s infected. Go deal with it so I can get some sleep.”

“What do I do?”

“Geez, do I have to do everything?” If you’re new to this blog, my wife is a doctor and I’ve grown accustomed to having easy access to health care. She groaned as she crawled out of bed and commanded me to make a bucket of heavily salted water.

“Now soak it,” she said, so I did. After a few minutes she said, “Rip off the scab and see if you can squeeze any pus out.” I did as commanded and some blood came out, but no pus. “No matter,” she said as she handed over some hand sanitizer, “just pour some of this on it.”

In that brief moment as the alcohol-based sanitizer was hitting the sore on my toe she said, “That’s going to sting a bit.”

I started inventing swear words on the spot. In fact, the next morning my son informed me that he had awoken in the middle of the night when he heard me yell out: “Jesus Mother Pus Bucket!”

Then she applied some Bactroban and a fresh bandaid and we went back to bed. My toe zapped me one or two more times just to be spiteful as the invading bacteria went through its death throes, but my wife’s medical ministrations had done the trick. I don’t know about the effectiveness of Bactroban, but I’m certain that alcohol cleanser had killed whatever evil demons had possessed my toe.

The Power House
After a morning at the beach and then heading back to the condo for lunch the kids were settling in to do a bit of homework because we’d pulled them out of school for this trip, so I told my wife I was driving to a gym down the road to work out.

I was about to blurt out, “No way in hell” when parrot guy saved me the trouble. “No, you don’t,” he asserted. “Having a parrot is like living having to take care of a two-year old for the rest of your life. These birds can be really aggressive and take years of practice and handling to get them to behave nicely.” Then he showed us the scars all over his hands. “Any one of these guys could shred a tin can with its beak.”

Hmmm… I bet one of them could take out the reptard no problem.

Then I realized that such a bird would be an even bigger pain in the ass than the reptard, with added squawking. No thanks.

I threw a few bucks into the guy’s tip jar in thanks and we headed off.

The Condo Manager’s Mai Tai Party
Those fuckers really sneak up on you.

On our last full day in Maui we were spending our afternoon at the pool and for the first time on the trip I decided to imbibe a little. The pool only served alcohol during this weekly party and then only for an hour. I’d been sitting pool side for a couple of hours and had already downed a few Newcastle Brown Ales when the free Mai Tais came out.

I almost never drink hard liquor, mostly because I think it tastes like ass. Not that I know anything about what ass tastes like. I’m just using my imagination. At any rate, these Mai Tais were pretty good, although they were mixed strong, and I downed a fair number of them in a short period of time.

Fortunately for me and everyone else, I didn’t turn into an asshole. I’d had a great trip, the sun was shining, my kids were playing nicely in the pool, and so I turned into “happy daddy.”

I jumped into the pool and started playing a variety of rough games with the kids, including one where I would shoulder press them a few times, then throw them into the air and catch them just as they hit the water. It was great fun.

My son noticed I was slurring a bit and said, “Daddy, are you drunk?”

No sense denying it: “Yup.”

My wife didn’t even give me a hard time because I was being such a good dad and the kids were having a blast. I even managed to cook a half decent dinner that night and remembered my Gatorade so I wasn’t hung over the next day.

Why United Airlines only Sucks a Little
We had a full day in Maui before we were set to fly home on the red eye – again through LAX. Air Canada partners with United for the Maui-LAX leg and I’ve never been fond of United. I’ve done a fair bit of business travel with them and had some bad experiences, not to mention that their seats don’t recline worth shit which makes sleep impossible for me.

I was tired and just wanted to get home as soon as possible so I could crawl into bed, but ten minutes after we pulled away from the gate the captain informed us that we had an engine problem and they had to return to the gate and check it out. I know that this always translates into “We aren’t going anywhere.”

Fuck.

I sent a text to my friend who was going to be picking us up at the airport that started with: “Stupid fucking United fucking Airlines fucking plane is fucking dead…”

But then nothing less than a miracle happened. Our plane was half full, and there was another plane leaving shortly for San Francisco that also was only half full, so they crammed us all on that one and off we went. I figured we’d be sitting in SF for most of the day because I couldn’t imagine they had many direct flights to Calgary, but we landed and found that the nice folks at United had already booked us on a flight leaving for home in only two hours.

We ended up getting home at almost exactly the same time we were originally scheduled, and our luggage even made it. Not only that, but the United folks had acted really nice about the whole thing rather than the usual “go fuck yourself” attitude that I’d experienced in the past.

So, United Airlines, I take it back. Thanks for getting us home on time with our luggage. Still, could you do something about those seats? They really suck.

Home Again
I once went to Cancun in January and on coming home we left +30C (86F) and arrived home to –30C (-22F). That was… unpleasant.

It was completely within the realm of possibility for Calgary to be that cold again in early November. I’d seen it happen before. We were lucky, however, and it was +5C (41F), which didn’t feel like too much of a shock.

As much as I love Canada, I’m tempted to start buying lottery tickets to give me just the smallest chance of being able to spend winter living in Maui. We all loved the place, and will definitely be going back, crappy economy be damned.


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