One time, we thought it would be a good idea to take both of my kids, and my step-kids, and my step-daughter’s boyfriend on a ten day cruise to the Caribbean. We set it up 15 months in advance, paid it all off, (Adulting. Woo.) and managed to keep it a surprise despite the fact that my partner and I kept accidentally talking about it all the time, and then would make these brilliant saves like: “Wow, I am so excited about going on a cruise………is what Paul at the office said today. Lucky Paul. We would never go on a cruise because cruises are expensive and we don’t love you guys enough…in fact you are constant disappointments…go do your homework…dinner is over.” Followed by elaborate winks and high fives, cause we are just that good at parenting.

How we finally told them was by wrapping up old suitcases for Christmas and then a bunch of random junk like olives and a life preserver and allowing the children to trade up until we finally revealed that we would be leaving on a cruise in two weeks. And it was great. And everyone was so excited. Counting down sleeps and planning what we would pack….the most fun ever. And I can confidently say the most fun ever, because it was WAY more fun than the actual cruise itself.

We left for the cruise in the wee hours of the morning and geared up for a 4 hour drive to the airport. Which, all things considered, went fine. My bar for what I consider to be a successful car trip has been greatly lowered since Adventure Day. As long as 3 out of 4 children survive, and no one has a bodily function on anyone else – it’s a win.

We decided we would have lunch on the 5 hour flight. This was both convenient and clever in that it involved all of the children pinned down while eating, as well as providing a distraction for an extra 11 minutes during the flight. This was fine until we actually got on the plane, where we were seated at the very back, so that when the flight attendant finally got to us during meal service she was able to cheerfully inform us that they were out of food. Which is good because…….sorry what do you mean you are out of food?

Turns out that United Airlines plays food roulette with all their flights, meaning that they put 21 meals somewhere amongst 3284 flights in a day and none of them are the one that my kids are on. So now I am 41 minutes into a 5 hour flight to Miami and I am trying to cobble together lunch for 5 children and a diabetic partner using gum from my purse, a bag of popcorn I found, and the power of persuasion. Like parenting MacGyver. Only the bad guys always win.

By the time we landed, no one was speaking to each other. On the whole plane. We stumbled off and managed to find some food in an effort to ward off a diabetic coma and somehow made our way through the following 9 hours of line ups, heat and whining….dear GOD the whining…..finally getting ourselves onto the cruise ship and settled. 

This part was a little bit exciting while everyone was getting settled in their rooms, just happy to have successfully arrived. It lasted all of three minutes, at which point we lost Escher. And by three minutes, I mean – this is when I sent him with his older brother, into a hallway that is comprised of 4800 identical doors and the same painting every three feet, without making it expressly clear that they were to stick together. So obviously the teenager just ran back to his room and Escher was left wandering in an increased panic through a Groundhog Day-esque maze of rooms on a boat where I have paid copious amounts of money to basically take us directly to the child trafficking capital of the world. Because I am the best mom ever.

Twenty-one minutes later, Rhyme came back to our room with Escher, because she had found him crying with a nice couple who were wandering through the hall and asking everyone they found if he belonged to them. This created a ripple effect of actually good parents who were all becoming increasingly alarmed that someone had lost their child and was apparently unconcerned. But it’s not that we weren’t concerned…..it’s just that we didn’t realize he was missing until Rhyme brought him back.  (Please refer to the end of the previous paragraph.)

Here’s something I’ve learned. There is no such thing as a vacation with children. Don’t get me wrong…you can go places with your kids and lie to yourself that you are on vacation. But all you are actually doing is paying for the pleasure of giving your children a new environment to misbehave in. And if you think the excitement of wherever you are going will be enough to distract them….you are giving every element in the situation way too much credit. The place you are going, yourself and definitely your children.

It doesn’t matter where it is, the children will get any combination of hot, tired, hungry, cranky and/or bored. And they don’t have the mental capacity to think to themselves, well obviously being up late and doing all this awesome stuff that the parents have paid a literal ransom for is getting a bit much for me, so I should calmly and rationally go take a nap or a small break so that I can continue enjoying this amazing childhood memory with all of the intention and youthful exuberance that a situation like this deserves. Instead, this all computes into: this place sucks….it’s obviously mom’s fault and I would clearly be remiss in my duties not to make sure she knows this at maximum volume until she breaks.

Alternately, they will just decide to embarrass you in the most public setting possible. Like the outdoor pool on the main deck of your cruise, in the middle of a sail-away party where there are approximately 7000 people celebrating the fact that they are not stupid enough to be on vacation with kids.

On one such day on the trip, we had bought Escher and Rhyme each an inflatable pool toy. Escher’s was a two foot long Spiderman, and Rhyme’s was Minnie Mouse. During the sail-away from port we decided that we would all head up to the pool and the kids brought their inflatables to play with until they got bored of them (which obviously means on the elevator ride up) at which point they pawned them off on James and I and ran off.

Shortly thereafter, James and I decided to go for a swim in the pool and we realized that these annoying inflatables were quite handy for straddling and floating around in the pool because they brought us just high enough in the water to facilitate the consumption of alcohol. For a while we floated around quite happily, James on Minnie Mouse and myself on Spiderman. Then Escher decided that there was an emergency and he needed Spiderman back. This set in motion the following series of events:

1. Escher comes running up to the side of the pool and starts to panic, demanding to know where Spiderman is.
2. Before I can say anything, he looks down, sees Spiderman between my legs and instantly gets a look of abject horror on his face.
3. Escher SCREAMS at maximum volume from the side of the pool “GET HIM OUT OF YOUR STINKY PARTS!!!!!!!!! GET HIM OUT OF YOUR STINKY PARTS …….RIGHT…….. NOW!!!!!!!!!!”
4. All 7000 people surrounding and in the pool stop talking and look directly at me and I’m virtually certain the DJ turns the music down.
5. Escher stands poolside with his arms out while I try and prioritize which accusation I most wish to deny (it’s not stinky….? It’s not in anything…?).
6. Meanwhile I am now reaching between my legs under the water in an attempt to return the offending object as quickly as possible …and when I bring up the toy, my best friend science kicks in and the surface tension of the water combined with an inflatable Spiderman means that I basically birth-eject the fucking thing out from between my legs and into Escher’s waiting arms while 7000 tourists all stare open-mouthed at me. (Several of them no doubt recognizing me as the woman who loses her children without realizing it….probably because she is too busy doing obscene things with Marvel comic characters.)
7. Escher grabs Spiderman, holds him close in an attempt to comfort him from the horrors he has just endured, gives a mortally offended snort in my general direction and stomps away from the pool.
8. I drown myself. Oh wait no that was unsuccessful. Damnit.

…I don’t remember any other really specific cruise memories, they all blend together into a mass of terror and regret, however I do remember the flight home. This is because we were flying United again and through some miracle of God I went to the bathroom at the exact right moment so as to overhear the flight attendants whispering to themselves behind the curtain at the back of the plane… “Well how many meals do we have….?”

At this point all of the events of the past ten days converged into a giant mental conniption and I literally yanked open the curtain and accosted two very startled, male flight attendants while I tried to form explanatory sentences and all that managed to come out was “I NEED TO BUY ALL OF THE FOOD.”

Eventually I calmed down enough to explain myself, including the MacGyver-gum-popcorn on the flight down and the Spider-Man molestation (once someone was willing to listen to me I actually couldn’t stop myself). The flight attendants ended up being totally terrific and let me run back to my seat to get my credit card so that I could literally buy all of the food. They had three sandwiches and some type of deli boxes and some assorted something or others and all I know is it cost me ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN dollars and I would have paid twice that. 

I do really have to give a shout out to those guys, because not only did they sell me all of their food, they did it knowing they were then going to have to walk through an airplane full of people and explain why a sweaty, stressed-out, portly woman had come running from the back curtain of the plane carrying ALL of the food muttering to herself  “best money I ever spent, take that Macgyver you asshole…” and now there was no food left.  

Then, on top of selling me all of the food and cheerfully tell the rest of the plane to fuck off, as I was thanking them profusely on their way past my seat, they knelt down beside me and asked me what we needed to drink. They then proceeded to smuggle me tiny bottles of rum throughout the flight. (Here honey, you drink this…followed by pats on the arm while I wept with gratitude.)

One time, before I had children, I went to Disneyland and I remember walking through the park and there was this German man standing in the middle of the park, completely beet-red, face dripping in sweat, literally SCREAMING in German at these three kids while the wife stood there staring blankly at nothing while the baby that she was holding chewed her hair.  That was their vacation. This is what children do. And if I had known German, I maybe would have learned this by proxy that day in Disneyland and I could have avoided all of this, but apparently I’m a do-it-yourself kind of gal.