Didn't Chevy Chase Do a Movie Like This?

The vacation I was dreading has come and gone, and it could have been a lot worse.

But yes, it was a disaster. My wife said it was the worst week in her life, and that’s saying a lot.

So here I am, poorer, with a backlog of work, and strained relations with my in-laws.

A lack of sex is enough to make things horrible for me, and turn me into a cranky guy. The lack of alone time made it worse. Travelling and not getting enough sleep piled it on.

I was stressed out with work, house, and car stuff leading up to the vacation, and I knew the car problems were going to be waiting for me when I got back. Plus, I ended up having to do some work while on this "vacation".

Travelling was such a hassle.

My kids got sick. One of them vomited all over me and my seat on the first flight. My wife got sick. Her sister got sick. Her sister's husband got sick. Their kid got sick. I didn’t. We were sharing a suite, which means my family was in one room, her sister's family was in another room. Their parents and brother were in another suite.

There wasn't a lot of sleeping, at least not on the part of me or my wife.

I discovered that my sister-in-law is annoying. I have no doubt I was annoying to her, too, but I really have no idea how her husband, who is supposedly not a chubby chaser (she didn't want one), can get it up for her. I think she's crossed the line from obese to morbidly obese. Not a lot of morbidly obese women can snag a husband who earns as much as her husband. She should treat him very well. And that gets into what really is irritating about her. Someone being morbidly obese is not irritating to me. But I can't stand the way she talks to her husband, their kid, or my kids. She also makes assertions about things like politics, history, and religion that I know I can counter effectively and thoroughly, but rather than argue, I kept looking for the common ground to keep the peace. She never shuts up. She's always "sick" with something and only "happy" when she's miserable.

There aren't a lot of people who just generally irritate me, but perhaps part of the problem was that we were in the same suite. When at a normal family event, there is so much else going on and I can always move away from one area to the other, and it is only for a few hours anyway. Not so in this circumstance.

We spent a lot of time in our suite, driving, hitting chain stores and restaurants, and swimming in a pool. All of that I can do at home for a lot less money and less hassle. Sure, there was sightseeing, but I can see the same stuff online and get a better view.

The kids were unusually high maintenance and I got vomited on again while out and about.

At least mother-in-law did not embarrass us in a drunken episode out in public. Instead, she spent much of the week drunk in her suite as my father-in-law made trips to the market to keep her supplied. So much for this trip being for a family event.

My wife and I did get one moment to ourselves. We slipped out for dessert and a badly needed quickie in the back of the rental vehicle.

One evening, while getting ready for a dinner that everyone was going to, I refused a request by my wife (a request that most men would refuse) and my wife, who was having a bad time and was tense, yelled at me. I yelled back. Her sister yelled at me. I yelled back. Then it devolved into arguing about anything and everything. It wasn't good. It was in front of the kids.

It actually wasn't difficult for my wife to come up with an easy solution to the original problem.

My sister-in-law and I have not talked since, and that has been WONDERFUL as far as I am concerned. Unfortunately, it isn't going to be as fun for my wife.

Our flight back was an overnight. I don't sleep on flights, so this was a bad bookend to a horrible "vacation".

In general, the trip was a rotten thing to put the kids through. It was bad enough for the adults. Thankfully, my wife never wants to do anything like that again. We even skipped a family event that has already taken place since the trip.

Teaching Your Daughters About Men and Making Boys Men

Perhaps you have seen this on Facebook:

We need to teach our daughters to distinguish between a man who flatters her - and a man who compliments her. A man who spends money on her - and a man who invests in her. A man who views her as property - and a man who views her properly. A man who lusts after her - and a man who loves her. A man who believes he is God's gift to women - and a man who remembers a woman was God's gift to man...And then teach our boys to be that kind of a man."

As I've written before:

There IS a shorter supply of good men who are also marriage-minded, because such men are usually forged by 1) a combination of good mother figure AND father figure who are themselves in a good marriage; 2) participation in nonfeminized programs and events where men socialize boys without interference or constant observation from women; 3) women who demand the men they socialize with be good. How many men are raised and exist in such a situation these days? Being raised in daycare, sharing an address with a never-married or divorced mother, not having man-oriented socialization, and being surrounded by immodest, easy females is not a recipe to make good, marriage-minded men.


How many of the people you've seen posting the first quote have stuck their sons in daycare, or made babies with the wrong man, or have passed up good men and fornicated with jerks? How many of them, if they do have a husband, let their husbands raise their sons with masculinity? How many people who have posted that first quote as their status update have behaved in ways that contradict the quote?

Major Retailer and Employeer Announces Male-Friendly Initiatives

Wow, Wal-Mart has announced several initiatives to promote men workers and men-owned businesses, since men have been hit harder by the recession.

These are some of the things included:

It will source $20 billion from men-owned businesses in the U.S. and will double its sourcing from such businesses in every market globally.

It will also offer training, market access and career opportunities to 60,000 men working in factories to help them "develop the skills they need to become more active decision-makers in their jobs and for their families."

In markets around the world, Wal-Mart will work with major professional service firms and merchandise suppliers with more than $1 billion in sales to increase male representation on Wal-Mart accounts.

Wait... wait... Aw, shucks, I got that wrong. I had to go back and read the story by Andrea Chang at LATimes.com again. Switch the sexes, of course. Uh,except that men HAVE been hit harder by the recession.

But Wait, There's More!

Recently I blogged about how I was not feeling great about our upcoming vacation.

Well, things have gotten even better.

A few weeks ago, everyone was over at the in-laws' home for an event that involved my wife's family, my family, and my sister-in-law's in-laws.

As a sister of mine was leaving, my father-in-law essentially made a verbal pass at her, albeit one that might possibly be chalked up to being a clumsy, and thus inappropriate, compliment. That possibility would normally be slight, but considering the guy's history, the possibility evaporates. He doesn't get that benefit. When Tiger Woods was busted? My FIL got in trouble. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was busted? My FIL got in trouble.

My sister, a sweet woman but no paragon of virtue, was creeped out enough to have nightmares about it. She told me about the incident several days later. I told my wife as soon as the timing was right (meaning, the kids were asleep and I could hold her hand and talk with her calmly, face to face.

My wife was horrified.

She told her siblings.

It was decided by all that it was best not to tell my mother-in-law. She would not do anything positive or protective with the information, and would almost certainly use the information as an excuse to get drunk and go into a rage.

My brother-in-law said he'd talk with his father about it.

I figured... okay, that's over and done with. We even got together again with no big deal.

But then my wife decided to call her father (when she knew her mother would not be around) and chastise him. He apologized repeatedly with qualifications. Then he apologized without qualification. Apparently, he let the call change his mood, and later in the evening my mother-in-law noticed, asked him what was going on, and rather than going with some other, easily available explanation, my Ivy League-genius father-in-law confessed to her.

This is going to be very interesting, going on this trip with them. Will we even make it, considering we were planning on sharing rides to the airport? Will something happen on the flight? Will the timeshare unit be mildly chilly or a minefield?

Stay tuned! Provided I survive, I will tell you what happens.

I Still Don't Want to Go on Vacation

Last summer, I wrote this. It didn't happen.

Short of something dramatic, though, we are going on a vacation soon. I'm not looking forward to it. Is something wrong with me?

Here's my thought process.

On the plus side, we're going someplace to which I've never been, and it is a major tourism favorite. If you were to ask me to name the top five places I'd want to visit before I died, this would be one of them.

Now for all of the other stuff.

We're going as part of family thing for my wife's family. As such, our lodging arrangements are set. Due to these arrangements, the highly-touted "vacation sex" is out. I just don't know how it will be possible to get even a little bit of time with a little bit of privacy somewhere in order to even have a quickie. So, NO SEX for over a week. Granted, if we have sex before the trip and after the trip, it will almost be keeping our pace anyway, but at least at home I can masturbate every day that we don't have sex. (Wanna lecture me on how married men shouldn't be doing that? Have at it.)

This also means I'm not going to be getting any alone time to do other things, like reading or all of the other things I find easier to do when I don't have a bunch of noisy people hovering around me.

My routines will be disrupted. This almost always comes with the territory for any vacation, and I understand this should not keep people from taking vacations. Still, I'm a wee bit obsessive-compulsive and I'm a creature of habit, and most of the stuff I don't do while on vacation I will want to do when I get back, so that means I will have a backup of things to do.

Now, many of those things are voluntary, but work isn't. Work piles up. Most of my work will not be done by someone else while I'm on vacation. It will be waiting for me when I get back.

Then there are the costs. I'm currently the sole income earner for my family. We're not destitute, but we have my income flowing into our regular bills, our investments, and our giving. We don't keep much in our basic banking accounts, and I like having an emergency buffer. Tourists often get gouged, and the costs of this trip are depleting our buffer (we didn't have time to plan far enough in advance to budget for this trip).

There are also the usual hassles that come along with taking a vacation, and I've haven't flown since the groping started, so this is going to be an interesting experience. I almost never use public restrooms or those on airplanes, so a long day of traveling is fun. I can hold it just about all day (it’s a gift, or the logical result of paruresis), but as I get older, that's another discomfort.

Our kids are still at the ages during which we have to constantly watch them, especially where there's water around (such as a pool).

In summary, I'm not expecting this vacation to be relaxing for me, but just the opposite. There will be some nice views, but other than that, I will pretty much be doing what I would be doing at home – watching our kids, but it will be costing me a lot more than living at home.

So yes, there are some things wrong with me. But put aside the OCD and paruresis, which never stopped me from taking a vacation before I became a father, and is there something wrong with my thinking about the vacation? Is this normal?

Tactics in Breaking Bad News

When someone has been seeing someone who threatens suicide if there is a breakup, my advice, stolen from Tom Leykis, is to schedule a session with a licensed therapist with that other person, under the pretense of getting relationship counseling, or with the claim of needing therapy yourself and wanting them along for some of the sessions. Once they are in the session, the dumper needs to tell the therapist what the about-to-be dumped has said as far as harming themselves or others, tell the other person it is over, and walk out. Then the dumped person is legally and morally the responsibility of the therapist.

We (the wife and I) might have to break some bad news to her mother, which will almost certainly send her mother into a drunken rage. Who knows... I need to talk with my wife about it more - maybe there is no good reason to say anything.

But this got me thinking. Besides dumping a suicidal person in a therapy session, where and how are other good places to break bad news that is likely to bring a destructive response?

Well, thanks to the post-9/11 America, I'm thinking a long commercial flight might be a good place, at least for your own protection.

Let's say you're going to dump someone who has not threatened suicide, but threatened (or conducted) violence to you. Why not dump them during a flight? But only if you can remain totally calm. If they go into a rage on the flight, they'll likely commit federal crimes. They get arrested and taken away once the flight is over. You may end up held for questioning for a while, but you'll be protected.

What do you think?

I can imagine the TSA and flight attendants are thinking, No, please, don't let this become an increasing trend.