It’s a Trip, It’s a Vacation

Some well meaning A-hole early on in your parenting career will hear you refer to some two day trip you recently took with two full bags, a noisemaker, three cameras and enough snacks to feed a stoned freshman from UMD and say “listen, it’s not a vacation, it’s not a trip”. And you’ll laugh, and you’ll finish your Summit EPA and you’ll realize that that well meaning A-hole is both correct and is an A-hole. Taking vacation days for yourself or just for you and your partner isn’t the same as going with your young kids. It would be amazing if a job just said “we’re gonna let you take sick days for this, cause we know it’s a thing you should do, but we know you aren’t getting rejuvenated”. Traveling with kids is a pain in the ass. And I think you’d have to be so wildly rich for it not to be a pain in the ass. On this particular “trip” I’m happy to say that Rachel and I also got a vacation. I have no shame in saying that it was the most fun part of the trip. I felt great about spending time with my kids, it was magical, it was rewarding. But do you know the fun of drinking free drinks at the Fort Lauderdale Embassy Suites while trying to figure how the two couples sitting right next to you are connected to each other while laughing with Rachel Levitt? If you do know that fun. . .holy shit, what are the odds? It was a joy. We ate a restaurant endorses by Guy Fieri and honestly, no apologies, wonderful, delicious and I haven’t really been disappointed by a Diners, Dives and Drive-In recommendation yet. Facts.

I also had the best cocktail of my life, and it’s not even that close. I got the Cucumber Margarita from El Camino Fort Lauderdale. Cucumber is a spectacular part of a cocktail. This one also had some kind of cordial that was spicy, but not too spicy and then they used Mezcal so it was smoky. I’ll be spending my days trying to figure out how to make this bad boy at home. Also, there was no distraction. We weren’t there for the food. We weren’t even there for the drinks. We were there to see the score of the All-Star game (Giannis beat Lebron). And the bartender was a sweetheart, we all had a good time, and that makes a drink taste so much better. So, the little Rachel and I solo vacation was the highlight but if you get to a truly warm place during a Minnesota winter, you win.

I’m in the midst of a historically le poo snowstorm here in Minnesota that I will have to traverse to get home from work tonight. I’m valiantly trying to stay in touch with the warm Florida sun in my mind. My youngest daughter turned three down there, my stepmom made a cake and let the kids decorate it. I’ve always been a big supporter of “just buy the cake” but you know what. . .decorating that cake was a whole new level of fun, so I’ve changed my tune.

I lost my wedding ring which sucks cause I love that ring, but I’ve been married for ten years, maybe it’s time for a new style. It’s not hard for me to imagine an amazing next chapter of our marriage, with a new ring. We have loose plans that we need to cement into real plans, to celebrate the occasion of us having been married for ten years. So that’s a cool opportunity to get a new ring.

As the kids get older, the travel gets easier. Everyone can walk, our five year old can walk for long ass distances without much sign of fatigue. Pretty great stuff. Since the last time I saw my Dad and his wife in person I’ve had a lot of therapy devoted to trying to get a better hold on my relationship with my childhood and thus obviously with my dad. It’s interesting to then navigate it all in person, it’s simultaneously less and more than doing it on a couch in White Bear Lake. I don’t know what I really want to talk about in regards to this . . .but I know that being open about therapy being a part of my life might help somebody else get ready to take that step and meet with a therapist. It’s helped me, not all at once, but in bits and pieces across the last five years. It’s made a difference, it’s helped me, and I bet it might help you too. It continues to help me. I’m getting something from it.

I finally got to watch the Rick James documentary from Showtime. Amazing. Not inspiring. Rick James sounds like a wildly talented and deeply tortured person. I have learned so much from his records, I love his sounds and his looks. But hearing about his dark times, it’s so painful. He served time for forced oral copulation, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon. These are horrible acts, acts I believe he did and acts that he served time for. He was a tortured person who was a musical genius. Of course the documentary had to spend the obligatory five minutes on the Rick James/Prince rivalry, the tea is too good to skip it. But it then got me thinking about both of these men dying before they hit sixty years old. Both deaths being connected to drug use, not necessarily drug overdoses, but the toll of drugs. It felt painful and ominous that night, watching the Rick James doc and thinking about Prince and Rick James. They were very different people, but they were black artists at the vanguard of music at the end of the 1970s who ushered in a new level of eroticism and vulnerability into the culture. Beyond that, they both had the curatorial muscle; the ability to deliver sounds and songs handcrafted for someone else. In this regard I think it’s probably fair to say that Rick James was better. James did more with the Mary Jane Girls, The Supremes, Teena Marie and company than Prince provided for most of the artists he cultivated. . .I feel conflicted saying this. . .I know how big the Time are, but I don’t know, I still give it to Rick for producer. Wow, send the hate mail to s@getoverit.org.

Now I’m back in Minneapolis, the music is washing over me, I’m getting back into the fold of things, I’ll get through this short week and get ready for a bunch of long weeks, but I come back a bit more inspired, a bit more rested and more ready for the weeks ahead.

I think that’s all I got. It was a vacation, it was a trip, it was a joy and it’s good to be back. Onward.