I'm Still Here

It's been quite a month. I've intended to blog several times, but have had trouble summoning energy this month.

There's something about having a months-long buildup to a long, fabulous vacation you've planned out in your head, complete with gorgeous beach pictures for your Christmas card, that leaves you completely drained and devoid of energy when said fabulous vacation unravels in a swirl of tropical storm winds, continuous rain, and lack of continuous power in the hotel room you are stuck in due to the aforementioned continuous rain.

It started well, then...

disaster struck (tree knocked down outside our room).

It looked like this for 80 percent of our week..

So, yeah, Jamaica did not turn out to be the fabulous vacation I hoped for. We had decent weather for the first 2.5 days and then the rain started and did not let up until we went home. Which might've been okay if the power had stayed on in our room. But we had about 1.5 days of no power in our room. Ever changed a dirty diaper on a wiggly toddler in a dark room? It's messy and no fun.

And still, it all might've been okay, if it was just the power in our building or room...however, it was the power on our side of the resort. So if we didn't have power in our room, neither did three of the restaurants, the kids' camp for our daughter, the XBox gaming room, and the spa...pretty much all the other things you do at a resort when it's raining and you can't swim. (To their credit, the spa managed to keep going by candlelight when the power was out, which was awesome.)

No power also means no air conditioning, which means massive humidity, which means feeling wet and sweaty for five days straight. Yuck. I'm high maintenance. I'm Glam-O-Mommy. This is my nightmare, people!

Mommy should be in this picture instead of me, because the bad weather turned her into Mommy the Grouch!

We ate almost every meal the last four days in the same single restaurant on the side of the resort with power...the last two days I was so tired of the food and depressed, I quit eating. Seriously. I came home three pounds lighter from vacation. WHICH NEVER HAPPENS.

It was incredibly stressful, especially not knowing if and when the power might go out again, and what might go wrong next. I couldn't relax. I was completely on edge. I was frustrated that the resort didn't seem to have a decent plan in place for handling the storm and the power outages. (They couldn't relocate the kids' camp to the side of the resort with a power? Add extra activities in the areas with power to give people something to do? Had they never had a storm before?!) All in all, I came away feeling like I'd spent a week on Survivor, which is a show I am not cut out for. It was like we went camping in the jungle instead of staying at a nice luxury resort. All that money down the drain.

Now, I should mention that while I had a pretty unhappy time on this vacation, my daughter loved it! She's two, so it's not like all of the weather and lack of power and sweating meant anything to her. And since they managed to keep the power on on the side of the resort where they did the nightly Sesame Street shows, she got to dance with Elmo, Ernie, and the gang for one hour every night--AND LOVED IT. She was a total Elmo groupie, standing right in front of the stage with her little arms up to him. It was the absolute saving grace of the whole trip, because I enjoyed watching her have such a fun time, even when I felt miserable. :)

ELMO! I'm right here!!

I don't know why Mommy is so upset. I'm having an AWESOME time with my Sesame Street friends.

And I don't mind that this is the dirtiest I've ever been in my life, because check out the cool sunken boat behind me!

Obviously, I need to take a page from her book about making the best of a bad situation. :)

Unfortunately, I came home drained and depressed, and that feeling has dragged on a bit. It took me two full weeks to unpack all the suitcases and do all the laundry, something I usually do right away. I let the house get a little crazy until the maids came to clean, which only added to my depression. I had a hard time focusing at work.

Worst of all, I feel terrible whining and complaining and being depressed about my vacation, because it's what I call a "high-class problem" to have...not that I'm high class or anything, just that it's not a real problem. It's not a real disaster. We all survived, we were lucky, our vacation just kind of sucked. Some people lost homes in the storm. Other people have real crises in their lives. I shouldn't complain.

However, I can't help feeling let down and like we wasted a bunch of money (oh, what else I could do with that money!) and I think I needed to write about this one more time just to purge it from my soul and move on, you know?

I've turned a corner in the last two weeks...got the laundry caught up and the house mostly back in order. Took my daughter to get two-year portraits made, which made me happy, since I didn't have family beach portraits from Jamaica (Note to self: next time, take family pictures on beach at first opportunity). Went to dinners with girlfriends and three Spurs games, which always cheers me up. And I'm rocking and rolling at work too.

Our ONLY family picture from the entire week. Cute, but not exactly what I planned for our Christmas card. Note that my daughter is snuggling up with Elmo. We tried to take a few family pictures after the characters left, but she pitched a fit and tried to follow Elmo, so this was it.

So I'm still here, I'm moving on, and I will try to get back to regular blogging (and NO WHINING) soon.

Things I'm Learning in Jamaica

1. That you can chew pure sugar cane and it will pour sugary sweetness into your mouth. But you only chew it...no swallowing. This is thanks to our bus driver (we were the only ones on the bus from the airport to our resort in Negril) who pulled over to buy some for us to try when my husband asked what it was the people were selling on the corner.

2. That my daughter, who has always been a great sleeper and early riser right along with my husband, may be turning to the dark side and becoming a night person like me! She started out getting up early, but these last two nights she has suddenly been finding excuse after excuse to stay up late...wanting to read books and listen to music. Hilariously, she has also figured out that telling us "I'm stinky!" or "I go poopy!" sometimes warrants a diaper check and has used this to get out of bed. She's also tried this when she's done with dinner and ready to go do something else, but after the second time she pulled this trick, we figured out that she KNOWS this will make us act and so now we are ignoring this excuse LOL!

3. That if there is something on the buffet line called the "Bubble and Squeak," it's essentially a potato pancake. No idea why it is called this interesting name.

4. That a man walking by on the beach will offer to sell you marijuana right in front of your two-year-old daughter. This happened to my husband when he took our daughter for an early morning stroll on the beach. He refused the man's offer, of course.

5. That it's a good thing you brought enough swimsuits for you and your daughter to wear a different one practically every day because it's so humid the wet ones you hang up will never dry out.

6. That upgrading your room to concierge level is awesome because you have a mini fridge in the room stocked with Cokes, Diet Cokes, Sprite, water, juice, ginger ale, and Jamaican beer, and it's refilled every day...and it's all included-no extra charge.

7. That maybe planning a trip to the Caribbean in September/hurricane season wasn't the best idea, now that Tropical Depression 16 aka soon-to-be Tropical Storm Nicole has been dumping loads of rain directly on Jamaica for 20 hours, even though it's 200 miles away from the "center" of the storm and not even ON the projected storm path. Move on storm!

8. That you should've taken your family portraits on the beach the first day, since now it may rain for the rest of your time here. So much for the Christmas card picture...

9. That champagne flavored with peach and blackberry schnapps is kind of delish.

10. That your daughter is going to be a terror at concerts in her teens, considering she spent all evening trying to bum rush the stage during Bert and Ernie's Island Adventure Stage Show! I felt like security trying to get her off the stairs to the stage--she couldn't understand why she couldn't go up there to be with her Sesame Street pals. Thank goodness the gang all came down into the audience at the end of the show and danced with all the little kids and she got hugs from everyone and danced with Ernie!

11. That Arnold Schwarzenegger had reason to be frustrated in Kindergarten Cop when he had to keep explaining to the one kid, "IT'S NOT A TOOM-AH!" I've spent all day the last several days telling my daughter, "IT'S NOT BROKEN!" as she declares EVERYTHING-the TV, the phone, my iPod, the computer, a closed door, you name it-"IT'S BWOKEN!" if it does not appear to be doing what she thinks it's supposed to/wants it to do!

12. That generally, when a resort throws a talent show and the guests are supposed to provide the talent, it should be called Beaches Guests Don't Got Talent. One kid did a cheer no one could hear, one clogged, one sang Don't Stop Believing by Journey and forgot the words halfway through (luckily for her, everyone from Generation X sang along FOR her-poor thing)...two adults sang a semi-nice version of I Can't Help Falling in Love With You, and a guy did a drum solo with the band. I'd say it was a toss up between the duet and the drummer, but we didn't stay to see who was declared the most talented of the talent-less.

13. That I cannot go without sunblock for two hours. Evidence: the sunburn I got on my shoulders on our first morning here. I have no excuse...even though it was overcast, I should know better. Have used 90 SPF ever since...well, until the rain started, anyway.

14. That my kid, like her father, is not going to be prone to sunburn--she's just going to turn beautifully brown. Lucky!! Using 90 SPF on her too.

15. That even when you have internet access in Jamaica, abc.com and hulu.com will not let you watch episodes of Castle online since you are "outside the United States and its territories." Seriously?!

16. That the Jamaican people, while generally lovely and friendly, all seem to suffer the same deficiency: giving incomplete instructions. We took our daughter to play in the toddler pool at the kids' camp and decided to leave her there for a bit since she was having fun. The nannies told us to bring them a change of clothes and diapers for her. We walk to room, obtain said items, and return to camp. Then, they tell us they also need us to bring our own wipes, causing a return trip to our room. At the airport, one customs person told me I could put my daughter on my customs/immigration form. Another told me she had to have her own form, but I only needed to fill out the front top section. A third told me I had to fill in the whole thing, both sides, top and bottom. @^#&$*@!

17. That I'm not the thinnest mama here rocking the bikini (a couple of anorexic looking moms have me wondering how they ever produced a baby from their skinny bods!), but I'm definitely fine to do so. Others not so much.

18. That one upside to staying at a family resort is NO NAKED PEOPLE. When we went to Sandals (a couples resort) just down the beach four years ago, we had some people going topless and we kayaked by the Hedonism resort and got the full frontal from another guy who seemed to be waving us over ("Paddle faster!" I said to my hubby.) I'm not against nakedness per se (good nakedness), but the kind of people who generally go naked at these resorts? NOT THE KIND YOU EVER WANT TO SEE NAKED. It's never the hot people, just the delusionally uninhibited.

I'm sure I've learned more in these past few days, but I should sign off for now. I have a hot breakfast date with my husband, daughter, and the Sesame Street gang. Anyone know a good "Stop Raining" Dance?