A Vacation Prayer

“May the Lord bless, and keep future vacations…
far, far away from me.”*

[Author’s note: this post has been edited for the squeamish.]

Okay, so the national park visit itself was actually, for the most part, enjoyable. There were cool dogs, hot tubs, pointless card games, quiet time alone with my wife and son and not a lick of work to be done the whole time. I understand I’m a whole different person when I’m not under the gun, deadline-wise. People enjoyed my company and the stammering didn’t begin till Day Three, which is about usual anyhow.

Everything else came in below expectations. Turns out The Boy’s motion-sickness issues haven’t been resolved yet. They weren’t so bad on the way out, but they were way past acute on the ride back. We were awash in chunky, McDonalds-fueled toddler-puke before we could get out of the twisty turny mountains, with little recourse but to wash off as best we could, change his clothes and drive the next 150 miles to home in a car that could be generously described as reeksome, had that been an actual word (which spellcheck assures me it’s not).

Then when we get back, we find that the temperature on Christmas Island has soared into the triple-digits and the air is full with forest-fire-related crud so thick you can practically walk on it. It’s like every single person in the town decided to have a back yard BBQ at the exact same moment. We’re far enough from the fires that we’re not in danger of getting burned up, but not so far away that we escape the toxic pall of smoke that has settled over this city like a lame metaphor.

Then the first night back, The Missus takes The Boy to his second movie (Jack Black’s “Panda” cartoon – didn’t score as high with either of them as “WALL-E”) to escape the heat and sludgy air quality only to discover the car is broken. Turns out I drove it all the whole 200 miles back – the first 50 miles through twisty, turny mountain roads – with compromised steering and brake-age.

So we run it into our mechanic the very next morning (oh, I almost forgot, when she called from the theater to tell me about the car I flipped out and screamed the f-word a whole bunch and smashed some inexpensive shit around. I had been looking forward to the three days of my annual vacation that I planned to spend supine in front of the TV in the front room, and coordinating car repairs with everybody else’s busy schedule hadn’t really been factored into that) and to cut to the chase, the goddamned thing ended up taking three days to fix. (Repairguy to wife: Gee, it’s too bad you got stuck with such a lemon.)

And on the last day of my vacation, The Boy stayed home from school with a fever. That was actually the highlight of the post-national park part of my week off. Time spent with The Boy is always precious, even if he’s logy with fever. So I engaged in one my few remaining self-destructive misbehaviors – online retail therapy. On their way in the next week are the last four seasons of “Oz” (completing our collection), and the first seasons each of “Veronica Mars,” “Hawaii Five-O” and even “Mannix.” I couldn’t save my vacation, but I could spend a bunch of money during it that would bring me enjoyment later on.

Meanwhile, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of movies (on DVD) between chauffer duties and feeling sorry for my ruined vacation plan. “The Onion Movie” was a big disappointment. Based on their online stuff, I went in with higher expectations than this movie met. The third “Resident Evil” movie (“Extinction”) was better than I expected, which isn’t saying much. I watched “Children of Men” again, hoping to be impressed this time, but no go. It’s just too bloody British for me to enjoy. Its whole story would have rolled under the opening credits in an American-made sci-fi flick. “Weeds” season 3, disc 1 made me regret having missed season 2. I may NetFlix that and check it out before I continue on with season 3. “Funny Games” is a nasty piece of work; a family-in-peril flick without many new ideas up its sleeve; its singular ‘innovation’ being that most of the ol’ ultra-violence happens offscreen. I also saw “Grace Is Gone,” which I knew would be a bummer flick, and it was. John Cusack plays the befuddled newly war-widowered dad of two young girls who just can’t find the words to tell his kids their mom is dead. I expected it to be preachy, but the only ideology espoused in the flick is by Cusack’s wise-cracking, left-wing smart-mouth brother. He reminded me of myself in all the worst ways. That’s why I keep my politics to myself whenever I’m talking to someone who has a personal stake in this fucking war. I’m not even sure why this film was made. It was like a foreign film in that very little happened, and most of that occurred between the lines. Plus I already knew that war casualties make people sad.

And then, with all the stress with which it had exploded upon my life, the vacation was over, and I was scrambling to catch up with my weekly deadlines. Work stress. Stress I could manage. Stress that didn’t proceed from plans gone awry and goals unmet. Vomit-free stress. Travel-free stress.

If freedom’s just another word for meeting lowered expectations, now that this “vacation” is mercifully over, thank God almighty, I am free at last.

*with apologies to “Fiddler On The Roof”