My wife and I are celebrating a decade and a half of marital
bliss this year with the traditional fifteenth anniversary gift - tacos. What
kind of tacos do you get the woman who has given you three amazing boys and has
put up with your crap all these years?
Authentic Mexican tacos, of course.
In Mexico.
(We’re going to Mexico - that’s what I’m telling you.)
In just a few short days we’ll leave the kids behind with
their grandma and head out for a week in San Jose del Cabo.
In case you don’t know where that is, it’s the other town on
the end of Baja California, right next to Cabo San Lucas.
Cabo San Lucas is the town you go to when you’re young and want
to play in the water all day and party with Sammy Hagar all night. San Jose del
Cabo is the town you go to when you’re forty-five years old and don’t want to
do upside-down tequila shots anymore.
My wife and I have been working together as a well-oiled marital
machine now for fifteen years, so we are dividing up the chores to get ready to
leave for a week in the same way we always have. When a team works this well
together, there’s no reason to change things.
My main job, with any impending vacation, is to remain
relaxed and act as the voice of reason. My wife hates this voice and refuses to
listen to it. Her main job is to lose as much sleep as possible in the days
leading up to travel, worrying about anything she can possibly dream up. And by
“dream up,” I don’t mean actual dreams, because she’s awake in the middle of
the night making lists.
My wife’s main concern seems to be the care and feeding of
the children. I continue to remind her that they will have adult supervision –
in fact, they will have incredibly experienced adult supervision in the form of
the woman that got her on-the-job training supervising my wife. I then remind
her that she survived childhood just fine, and even went on to thrive and
create babies of her own, and we’ve been caring for them for so long now that
we desperately need to leave them and go have authentic Mexican tacos without
them, and they will be just fine eating mac ‘n cheese. This prompts her to
write another shopping list.
She makes a list outlining all the school end-of-year field
trips and activities that will occur while we’re gone. I remind her that the
teachers know where to go, and every activity will start and end at the school,
so Grandma doesn’t need to worry about it. She scowls at me and adds the school
address to the list.
She makes an emergency contact list of neighbors for
Grandma. I tell her that 911 is really the only number she’ll need. She asks me
to do something useful. I Google “best tacos in Cabo” and save the locations to
my phone.
She revises her packing list and decides a shopping trip is
in order because she has nothing to wear for dinner on day four. I tell her the
taco place won’t mind if she shows up in the same outfit. This does not help. She
makes a list of all the lists she still needs to make.
Speaking of clothes, one of her other pre-vacation duties is
to pack at least a week and a half ahead of time. I could understand that
timeline if we were mounting an expedition to a remote part of the globe that
had no civilization, like Antarctica or Detroit. But we’re going to a really
nice resort in a modern Mexican tourist city. I am planning on packing my swim
shorts, possibly another pair of shorts, my toothbrush, and a shirt. I will
handle that the morning we leave, about ten minutes or so before we need to head
for the airport.
(Just kidding. She’d kill me. I’ll pack at least an hour
before we leave.)
I’m not kidding about the lists, though. She actually
started writing me lists three or four months ago, with all kinds of things for
me to do. I’ll give you a few examples of this crazy stuff if I can find one of
them... Hang on… here it is.
1) Book hotel – OK,
that one was pretty important. She sat me down at the computer and we did this
one together. I don’t think she trusted me with it.
2) Figure out airport
parking – C’mon! Not a problem. It’s an airport. Of course they have parking.
No action required.
3) Make the cell
phones work in Mexico – Why wouldn’t the cell phones work in Mexico? They
work just fine in San Diego. No action required.
4) Get passports out
– No sweat. They’re around here somewhere, in a drawer, or the kitchen, or maybe
a box in the garage. I’ll find them easy enough. I can do that later.
5) Buy plane tickets
- …
Uh… I have to go now. I just remembered something I need to
take care of.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen
No comments:
Post a Comment