Hawaii

Vacations are a fascinating magnifying glass look into your life. Everything is intensified - the highs are higher and the lows are lower. And yet we insist on doing this to ourselves. Maybe we’re bored? 

We have only two more nights here on Oahu. So far the highlights have been:

Swimming in a waterfall at Waimea valley

Today’s snorkeling at Shark’s Cove

Our magical yurt stay (four nights there, now we’re in a pretty dumpy beach cottage on Oahu’s north shore)

Bobby getting more confident in his swimming and having a blast in the waves

The not so great parts have been:

Both kids, but Theo in particular, being exceptionally whiny, complaining, and ill-behaved. I feel like all we’ve been doing is angrily barking out orders that are completely ignored and then meting out punishments. But then I look around and all I see is mothers  grabbing kids’ arms and leaning down and hissing in kids’ ears full of rage, so apparently everyone is having the same vacation we are.

Theo may in fact be sick. He was running a fever for a couple of nights and appeared to have swollen lymph nodes - we were seconds away from packing him off to an ER one night - but seems to have rallied at this point. It would explain his exceptional crankiness.

We are also having to make Bobby sit on the toilet to poop after every meal and in the morning and at night, all so he doesn’t soil himself, which he’s done a couple of times anyway. It’s fucking exhausting. 

My birthday was a bit of a hot mess. The BF as usual did not plan ahead and spent much of the day wasting time frantically trying to come up with something for us to do - it ended up being a desultory trip to Waikiki involving a glass bottom boat ride (we saw absolutely nothing - but it was fun being on a boat) and a cheesy magic show plus dinner which was all meat and therefore inedible to me. The kids got a kick out of it so it wasn’t a total loss but...yeah. He also had a complete freak out meltdown trying to find the magic show during which I had to say to him, “hey! Don’t you dare say ‘what the fuck’ to me!” and had to confront him for the bajillionth time about his smoking, which has been way out of control on this trip. He agreed to dial it back. On trips like this I see how incredibly high maintenance and helpless he is, and also how badly he handles stress. I’ve had to bail us out and take over much of the time here, which is typical for us. Normally I don’t mind being the leader - I’m comfortable in that role - but I had hoped he could handle some planning for once. Clearly he can’t so I won’t let that happen again. 

So we had a couple of pretty shitty days and I was feeling pretty down about it. And yet he’s done so much right on this trip and been such a help and loving dad to these kids. It makes me feel like an asshole for fixating on that one moment he snapped and wiping out the 1,000 things he did right, forgetting how totally impossible a trip like this would be without another committed parent-figure (trust me - with two barely swimming kids on a beach, you really, really need two adults!).

Much to my (expected) horror, our new beach cottage is full of giant waterbugs. He killed many of them last night. I for sure could not have handled that on my own without completely losing it. I could picture myself throwing sleeping kids in the car and high-tailing it to the nearest Marriott.

I’ve decided relationships are a lot like trips to Hawaii. Beautiful beaches, soft breezes, shave ice, waterfalls, tacos...and waterbugs. You kind of can’t have this beautiful place without the nasty tropical underbelly. Doesn’t mean you have to love the waterbugs...you just have to accept they’re there and try to focus on the good stuff.