Caribbean Vacation

Hey, I know you!  Long time no see!  How've you been?  Did you miss me?  Don't worry, not much has changed.  I'm just a little tanner and choc full of wonderful new tales to tell.  You know, I often tell Gina that I think our life would make a killer reality show.  Were that true, this past week would be our season finale.  And it would be a TV legend.  If Chevy Chase's career keeps on the uptick, he may even want to steal my vacation and turn it into another of his "vacation" movies. ... I'm calling it "Caribbean Vacation: The Griswolds Go To St. Lucia".  It starts like this: the family decides to take a red eye from LAX to San Juan, Puerto Rico towing twin 2 year old's and 7 other Greek family members.  The babies sleep for the first 4 hours and then raise all kinds of hell the following 3.  I'm just saying, if it's only 3am "LA time" why does the moron next to two sleeping toddlers feel compelled to raise the shade to "check out the sun". ... who cares if it's now 6am, the rest of the plane is still firmly under the illusion that it's 3 and we're very happy to continue that fantasy. ... jackass!  We landed in San Juan and the girls were suddenly very giddy. ... I believe this is the moment that the delirium settled in for them.   We boarded the propeller plane for our puddle jump to the island and then sat for 45 minutes in the tin bucket in sweltering heat while they tried to fix a latch.  Since it was a prop plane they couldn't turn it on and thus we had no air conditioning.  I was ready to black out before one of my sister-in-laws took Genevieve off my lap and I got a little bit of breathing room.  Once airborne, the kid was back in my lap and happily looking at the safety procedure brochure.  Suddenly she flung it up and stabbed me with the corner right into my eye. ... my good eye.  If you're not an avid reader I should mentioning I'm pretty much blind in my left eye.  So know I'm pretty much blind in both.  We arrived in St. Lucia about the same time our luggage was landing in San Salvador. ... which was awesome.  We've now been in the same cloths for about 36 hours in 89 degree heat and 400% humidity so a change of cloths wouldn't have been the worst thing imaginable.  Fortunately everyone else got their bags, including the babies, so at least there were diapers that could be changed.  Only Gina and I would be the source of the smell from this point on.  We got to our hotel and it was actually quite lovely. ... I, on the other hand, was a bit of a grumpy, stinking mess - so I signed off and took a 2 hour nap.  I met the girls for dinner after that and then we all went back and crashed for the remainder of the evening.  The next morning, refreshed (only mentally of course, we were still wearing clothes that smelled of camel refuse) I changed my outlook and took the day head on.  I bought a $30 swim suit at the hotel store and a $12 beer mug magnet that Genevieve broke in the process and we headed to the beach.  I thought I'd take my sister-in-laws out for a little adventure, so I signed out a catamaran and we set off across the bay.  I should mention that at this point my right eye is nearly swollen shut and I'm operating on the left eye which sees mostly just colors and fuzzy shapes.  Not the best guy to be operating a sail boat - but I've been on doing this since I was 5. ... what's the worst that can happen?  Well I'll paint one scenario for you.  I taught one of the girls how to steer and was trying to teach the youngest when we managed to get up against a cliff and out of the reach of the wind.  With out wind a sail boat is basically just a piece of drift wood so we went where the current took us. .... which happens to be right in to that very same cliff.  Being the man on board with three adolescent girls I jumped off the boat and on to the rocks to absorb the impact and push us back out.  I found the rocks.  I also found a couple of sea urchins in the process.  I jumped back on the boat and the girls screamed at the blood trailing from my foot.  I pulled out a purple spine about and inch long from my sole (which felt like it was my soul) and the blood fountain that followed pretty much put the three of them off sailing for the day.  I hobbled back to our room where I pulled out a total of 6 spines.  The best was the one Gina had to pull from my big toe, which looked like nothing but kept growing as she kept pulling. ... that's what she said. ... literally.  The second best was the one in my middle toe which didn't come out until after a 4 mile run on day 4. ... that was weird.  So at this point, I'm now blind, my feet are cut to $#!t and I smell like an Afghan goat.  But damn it if I'm not smiling as best I can.  My mom's rule of law: "Show a good time, have a good time."  I'm showing. ... I'm showing!!!!  Luggage showed up shortly after that which gave me the lift to push on. ... silly me.  Let's just speed right along and say day number 3 saw a crab attach to my nipple.  Day 4 saw me leave the comfort of the water slide at the pool and land on the wall of the tube on my back.  Can't you just picture Chevy in this role?  Days 5, 6 and 7 were incident free, thank god!  And the plane rides home were wonderful.  Here's something we learned - travel with kids around nap time, not after bed time.  Sit in the very back of the plane, and if you have twins (two kids under two can't sit in the same row) sit on opposite aisle seats so it's almost like you're right next to each other.  Aside from all of my shenanigans the trip was amazing.  The girls were wonderfully behaved and charmed the pants off everyone at the resort - who were nearly all English. ... I found that weird - don't American's go on vacation any more?  And what's up with Switzerland?  I met a Swiss guy who get's like 9 weeks of vacation. ... where do I sign up?!!  But with using our lame American vacation plan we spent our days on the beach, our afternoons napping, our evenings eating and our nights dancing like crazy.  My mom was right.  I showed one hell of a time, and we sure had one.  But now back to the grindstone, and regularly blogging.  So come back tomorrow. ... same dad time, same dad channel.