Friday, April 27, 2007

Estoy Cansado (Vacation Recap: The Mexican Edition)

I’ve been back from Mexico for about a week, trying to slowly ease myself back into work, and it’s just not fun. My life would be a lot easier if I could have mimosas every morning at breakfast, and someone came around with margaritas around 10 a.m. Do I start with the bad or the good? Hmmm….

The good. I’ll start with vacation. It was awesome, incredible, relaxing, and all the other good adjectives that one could imagine. We left early Saturday morning and drove down to NJ for a belated Easter (the Lord rises late for us), Brian’s birthday and a stop at Forth & Towne – before, sniff, it closes. I had made a New Year’s Resolution to stop spending so much money on clothes, and I gave up shopping for Lent, so it had been a while since I bought anything new. Of course, everything was fantastic and I have some cute new wrap dresses and funky t-shirts for summer. WHY is this store closing? I ended up talking with the sales girl for a while about how sad we were about the shutdown and why the clothes fit so great (the secret is the fit model. It’s a size 10 woman). All the 14-year-old aneoerexics and the un-boobed have their own stores. Why can’t I have mine?

We had dinner with the extended family down in Freehold (Broooce!) and ate like fat bastards and with the exception of a minor delay last Sunday morning due to the Noreaster, got the hell down to Mexico. Our seats were spread apart, but YG ended up swapping and got a seat next to the MG. I was seated next to a young couple who were going on their honeymoon, and were perfectly pleasant minus the fact that they were wearing glittery “just married” t-shirts.

Immigration was long and hot, but uneventful. I am always amazed by Americans and their sweatshirts when I travel. Granted, I am not a fashionista, but a corporate-logo-ed crewneck sweatshirt as travel attire? Please. There’s always a little part of me that secretly hopes that all the people wearing ill-fitted America: These Colors Don’t Bleed sweatshirts with eagle artwork are all engaged in some form of group performance art. That would be awesome.

After some haggling with the crazy airport timeshare people and a bus ride, we finally arrived at the resort. It seemed nice enough, but YG’s persistence, the MG’s cuteness and my jugs helped us score a nicer room with a terrace and a balcony, overlooking the resort and the ocean at no extra cost. The MG and I quickly put our swimsuits on and ran down to the pool, while YG got some “alone time” to unwind and develop some strategies to not kill the two of us during a week’s worth of family fun. The MG swam while I provided the best supervision one can while drinking margaritas and reading Allure.

The rest of the week provided much of the same. I’ve never done an all-inclusive resort before, and if it was just YG and I, I might not do it again. But with a kid? Awesome! She made a few friends at Kids Club and we never had to worry about where we were going to eat or go for entertainment. None of the food was fantastic, but none of it was bad either. It was middle of the road, with the exception of some fantastic guacamole. And I never developed a raging case of the poops, so….all good.

The grounds were beautiful. We spent a lot of time lounging by the pool and on the beach. I thought I’d spend a lot more time reflecting, writing, figuring out all my big issues and shit, but I didn’t. I just RELAXED. I drank a lot. I ate a lot. I swam a lot. I read a lot [4 books: finished the Barack Obama book, finally read Housekeeping, and started both Intuitive Eating and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius] and listened to my iPod. I did some writing, but nothing intense – a lot of “wow, the water is really blue and warm and I am very happy, blah, blah, blah” stuff. I didn’t obsess about my body. I spent most of the week in a bathing suit and nobody died. I even showed a coworker some of the pictures from vacation with me in a bathing suit and again, nobody died. The MG and I rode the waves, and the YG and I spent a lot of time making eyes at each other and being happy to be around each other. Kind of gross, actually. J

On Wednesday, we took a boat to Isla Mujeres and rode the waterslide and did some “shopping” at some of the crappy tourist shops downtown. It was sort of a cheesy trip and could have been bad (i.e. the promised “beautiful beach and waterslide” was actually more like ghetto plastic slide running into the skeevy lagoon where the boats dock), but we tried to have fun and actually did. I nearly cracked my skull on the waterslide. Those things are wicked fun (see, I’m getting the lingo!). On the ride back, the MG entertained the whole boat with her sick moves and interpretive dance. We walked along the beach that night and laid on the lounge chairs, watching the sky. I saw a shooting star and a few satellites and got a little teary because the whole night was very pretty and Walton’s and nice.

MG played with her Canadian friend from Kids Club on Thursday, and we had dinner with her parents. On Friday, we set up camp at one of the small beach huts and stayed there for the whole day. It was the best day all week with lots of swimming and playing and shell hunting and snacks and candy bars in the sand. The MG won a dance contest that night, and YG and I were able to watch ESPN and the Yankees/Sox game. [sidenote: Yankees. WTF?]

Saturday it was back to the airport and long, sweaty lines and nasty people. The take-off was smooth, though, and I saw our resort from the air. And then we were back. In New Jersey. With Godfather and Maggie Moo's.

I don’t feel like getting into the bad quite yet, so I’ll just leave it at that for now.

And I'm trying to upload the pictures to Flickr, but she's totally being a bitch right now. Grrr...