The plan for the first full day of vacation was a breakfast buffet followed by a trip to Seaworld -- because what goes together better than a belly full of breakfast food followed by fish smells and a roller coaster? Nothing, that's what.I like to get an early start on vacation. But with Babies!, there is no such thing as an early start. Or a quick start. Or, as it turns out, sleep.
At home, the Babies! have "crib tents," which are exactly what they sound like-- tents that go over the cribs and keep the twins from jumping out of them, in the process transforming the entire crib into something that recalls a 6th grade science class bug collector, but the thing works: the Babies! stay in the cribs, no matter how much they jump, and eventually they will fall asleep. We'd come to take the immobility of the crib for granted, because Mr F and Mr Bunches never want to sleep and do everything they can not to. It seems, sometimes, that they simply don't sleep. We have a baby monitor and at times we'll wake up at 2 a.m. to hear the boys jumping in their cribs, or just talking in their mysterious twin language, with bursts of English. There will be babbling and humming and then one will say "Yeah."
Staying up all night talking enthusiastically is cute when they're safely in their room down the hall trapped in their cribs and I can sleep. It's not as cute when they are sharing a room with you in the time share and their beds are air mattresses that are great to jump on but don't hold them in at all, so that they can do what they want, which is not sleep, and if theyy're not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. Throughout the vacation, including the first night, we tried to get the Babies! to sleep in a variety of ways.
First was by letting them play until they slowed down. The flaw in that plan was that they won't slow down. Ever. They just keep bouncing and running and throwing things and grinding Oreos into the carpet and trying to climb the blinds on the window.
The second plan was sitting them on their air mattresses to watch TV and drink a bottle. While that seemed like a good idea to us, they had a better idea-- to them-- the better idea being to jump on the mattress and throw the bottle, and then go running across the room to pound on the door to the older kids' section.
The third plan was sitting them on our laps and watching one of their movies until they fell asleep; if you can hold one of them motionless for long enough, the engine stops running and they conk out. This plan is harder than it sounds, because they are strong kids. Holding Mr F and trying to make him sit still is something akin to trying to cram a bag of ferrets into a box that's too small for it. Worse, if he can't get away, he still tries to fight sleep using whatever means he can, including slapping himself on the cheek to stay awake. It's like watching a miniature truck driver try to make a deadline.
A few nights in, I tried a fourth option -- let the Babies! do whatever they want, and snooze on the couch. It would have worked brilliantly if Mr F hadn't decided to hit me to keep me from sleeping. Sweetie didn't approve of my fourth option, although I think she secretly approved of Mr F's response to it.
The result of all this is that Sweetie and I got roughly 1 hour of sleep per night, and not one solid hour; it was an hour pieced together between trying to get the Babies! to sleep and then trying to get them back to sleep, and then trying to avoid being kicked in the head when they'd wake up and crawl onto our bed and fall asleep, because they are violent sleepers: they flip and toss and kick and roll. At one point, Mr Bunches was sleeping next to me, and there were four feet of space between us and Sweetie. Mr Bunches out of nowhere inched across the bed and kicked Sweetie in the head. While still sleeping.
At least, I think he was sleeping. I was watching him the whole time and he never opened his eyes. The fact that I didn't try to stop him is probably why Sweetie later approved of Mr F's slap attack on me.
But we made it through that first night, and I got up at the crack of maybe 7. I couldn't tell because all the clocks in the time share had a different time on them. I tried to make coffee, but I couldn't figure out how to get the coffee maker to turn on, and then when I did I thought I had figured out where to put the coffee and the water, but it never made coffee. It steamed and burbled and the pot remained empty and eventually there was some gross water in the basket that I considered drinking but dumped out.
While not making coffee, I also tried to go use the bathroom. There were two in the condo, one in our bedroom where Sweetie and the Babies! were still sleeping and kicking each other, respectively, and the other in the older kids' area. Rather than wake our side, I went to use the older kids' bathroom, only to realize that they had locked me out. So I sat and watched the news of the overnight murders and sex scandals, and the weather, all without the sound on again because the TV was right outside the bedroom and I didn't want to wake anyone up. I tried to gather what the weather for the day would be, but I couldn't read lips and everything the weatherman showed on the screen looked like a hurricane. I thought maybe there was supposed to be a hurricane, but wouldn't they put a warning up about that? The weatherman wouldn't just calmly stand there telling everyone some sort of superdestructive hurricane was coming, without at least some little storm ticker, right? The expression on his face didn't say "hurricane." I've never seen what expression a weatherman would wear when he was telling people a hurricane was coming, but I'm pretty sure it would be recognizable. This guy just looked bored.
I later asked Matt whether it was hurricane season, and he said "Yes, but it'll just be a tropical storm by you," which, like the shark answer, did not reassure me. It also made me wonder, because Matt sounded bored by that, so maybe Floridians take sharks and hurricanes for granted.
The weatherman also had something I called the "Comfort Index," a graphic which showed a temperature, and a humidity reading, and a bar labeled "Comfort" with "LO" at one end and "HI" at the other. At 7 a.m., the temperature was 96 degrees. The "comfort" arrow was as far towards "LO" as it could be. It never moved the entire time we were in Florida.
Eventually everyone got up, and we began the laborious process of getting the Babies! ready to go out into the harsh Florida atmosphere, which already was so hot and humid that it approximated a trip to Venus. Getting a kid ready meant grabbing a baby and changing his diaper, then putting clothes on him, then putting sunscreen SPF 50 on him, then putting mosquito repellant on him, then changing his diaper again because that took so long to do, then washing his hands because you know what Babies! do as soon as their diaper comes off, then putting more sunscreen and mosquito repellent on because you'd just washed it all off cleaning the baby.
With the twins slathered in their protective coating of chemicals, we set out for the breakfast buffet. I love "All You Can Eat" Breakfast buffets, but I will be the first to admit that they are not for everyone. The charms of the breakfast buffet are lost on those who don't see the pleasure in having a plate-- or plates-- piled up with pancakes, french toast, sausage, pineapple, gravy, watermelon, biscuits, and chocolate chip cookies. The one we went to also had soft-serve ice cream cones and sundaes available. I washed it all down with a diet Pepsi. It's important not to overdo things.
I was a little slowed down at the buffet because Mr Bunches decided that he wanted to stick close to me and not sit in his high chair, so I had to eat with him on my lap, and go through the line carrying him or holding his hand, and carrying my plate in the other. Each option - -carrying or walking him-- posed problems. If I carried him, he tried to grab stuff off my plate and throw it and tried to stick his hands in the various entrees and soft-serve ice cream in front of him. A breakfast buffet is not the most sanitary of restaurant options in the first place, I know, but I felt like I would be bothering my fellow overindulgers if I just let my kids stick their hands in everyone's food randomly. They already stick their hands into my food randomly, but I'm used to it. When I share a drink with them, for example, Mr Bunches will take a sip and then helpfully put half of it back for me. Mr F doesn't even sip; he just reaches his hand in up to the elbow and grabs ice cubes. What I'm saying is you don't want to ask me to share my drink.
Holding Mr Bunches up wasn't an option. On the other hand, if I walked him, he'd investigate every nook, cranny, and dropped piece of food on the floor. I wasn't worried about him eating stuff -- Mr Bunches does not like to eat, period, and we have to trick him into eating by distracting him. We'll get a spoonful of yogurt ready and say Look, over there, and when he falls for it, we'll slip the food in. Or we'll put something he might like on his plate, like a Cheeto, and when he tries to put it in his mouth we'll also cram some green beans in there.
So I didn't think he'd try to eat anything off the floor, but he did want to see everything that was on the floor, so about every inch we moved, he'd crouch down and investigate whatever blob of junk he'd found. We were holding up the line, and, equally importantly, holding up my access to gravy-covered chocolate chip cookies. So I tried to keep him from slowing us down, but Mr Bunches and Mr F have a trick up their sleeve if they want to stop: They go No Bones.
"No Bones" happens when the Babies!, holding a hand, go limp, as though all their bones have evaporated. It's a nonviolent form of protest they've developed to get their way, and Mr Bunches used it at the buffet. I'd try to take a step; he'd want to inspect a crust of toast. I'd say "No, come on, we have to keep moving," and there'd be a tug on my hand and I'd look down and he was flopped on the floor, hanging limply by his left arm, a puddle of baby looking up at me. It looks exactly the same as if I'd tazered him. It's an amazingly effective tactic. I intend to use it the next time I'm shopping with Sweetie and she wants to go in a store I don't like. I'll just go limp at the entrance and flop down.
Back at the table, The Boy, Middle, and Sweetie were trying, unsuccessfully, to keep Mr F from throwing napkins all over the place and rubbing stuff into his hair.
We made it through breakfast-- and left a large tip-- and headed over to Seaworld. The older kids had picked this as their theme park to go to. When we started planning the vacation, we were going to go to Disney World for the Babies! and then another theme park for the older kids, but then we realized that the Babies!, being only 21 months old, really have no concept of what Disney World is and would never remember it. They get every bit as much enjoyment out of bouncing on the time share couch as they would out of Main Street, U.S.A., more, maybe, if we also let them play with straws and napkins, so we opted for just one theme park, and let the kids choose. They opted for Seaworld, and I'm not sure I understand the choice.Seaworld is not really an "amusement park" the way I think of it. There are only two rides in the entire place -- a water ride (shown above) and the "Kraken," a roller coaster. The rest of it is devoted to water shows, aquariums, displays of sting rays and dolphins and turtles, and a playland. It's basically an aquarium that lets you pet the fish and has a couple of rides.
If I had opted to take us to Seaworld, I'm fairly sure that it would be seen as something educational and thus boring, since everything I opt for the family to do is seen as educational and thus boring, a rap I get from the time I proposed, on our trip to California, that we go to Death Valley and along the way also see a canyon where there were fossils. I was voted down and in place of that we went to Rodeo Drive. But since the kids opted to take us to an aquarium, it was seen as "cool."
After waiting in line for 30 minutes to get tickets, which we did because we didn't want to risk getting whatever fake tickets every store in Orlando promised to sell us if we'd just look at their time shares, we got inside and the first order of business was cooling off. The temperature had risen by that point to something in the three digits, or maybe low four digits, and the humidity had hit infinity. Sweetie saw a guy selling water and those little spray-fan bottles and said we should get one to keep everyone cool.
"One bottle and a fan please," I told the guy.
"$17.75," he told me, and I almost choked. I paid it, but I wasn't happy. $17.75? I could have saved a lot of money by getting the water and just dumping it on everyone's heads. Or by 'accidentally' falling into the dolphin pond. But that's the way theme parks work, and I was prepared for that. We'd gone to Universal Studios in California a few years back, and had taken along a budget of $150 for the day for refreshments. That was spent before noon. A soda in a theme park will set you back between $5 and $10 -- more if you want the "souvenir" cup, which I always do want. If you eat dinner at our house in the months after a vacation, you will have the option of having your beverage served in a very-classy T-Rex cup, or day-glo souvenir "Gatorland" plastic thermos. You should opt to use those, because they have lids and that will help keep Mr F's hand out.
Seaworld is an extremely interesting place filled not just with $17 fans but with all kinds of animals that you can interact with, take pictures of, pet, watch do tricks during shows, learn about, feed, and otherwise have a great time with. You can do all of those things, though, only if you are not traveling with The Boy, Middle, and The Babies!, each of whom had their own agenda.
The Boy wanted to see the Shark display; that was his only goal for the day, as it turns out. The Shark display, though, is not anywhere near the entrance or any other exhibit; you've got to go through the whole park to get to it, which meant that The Boy had no patience for any of the other exhibits or rides. Take the sting rays: He pointed out for us the sting ray exhibit where you can pet sting rays. So we went there, and a Seaworld employee was giving a talk about sting rays and people were gathered around the tank trying to pet them. I petted one and took some pictures and a video, but was getting urged to keep going by The Boy. When I tried to slow him down by getting him to pet a sting ray, he stuck his hand halfheartedly in the water towards one about 8 feet away. "It doesn't want to come by me," he said, and moved on.
We did eventually see the Shark display, and I could see why he loved it; it's incredible. It's one of those aquariums where you walk through in a tube underwater and the sharks all swim around you and over you, so you're almost in the water with them, and there's more sharks than you can ever imagine in one place.Sweetie had this to say about the sharks: "They don't look that big." Jaws has ruined sharks for a lot of people, I bet. I tried to explain that six or seven feet was plenty long enough to be scary, but I don't think she was buying it. I could tell she didn't think they were scary because she was walking Mr Bunches and made no effort to put herself between him and the sharks. (Mr Bunches did not notice the sharks for almost half the trip through the aquarium. He was examining the floor. When he did look up and see them, he seemed impressed. But, then, he is also impressed by his own index finger, which he will examine for minutes at a time.)
Middle's agenda for the day was to ride the Kraken, so she, too, had no patience for anything else, before or after. We got to the Kraken relatively early in the day, skipping only the sea turtles and dolphins to do so, and because the lines were short we rode on it twice. I have a love/hate relationship with roller-coasters. I think they're fun and all, but I can't stand heights and so I hate that first ride up the hill, when the roller coaster is getting slowly yanked up by a chain, and it's creaking and groaning and laboriously climbing to the point where the ride gets quick enough to be fun.
It's not the heights, per se, which bother me, either, because I'm sitting in the roller coaster, so it's not as bad as it would otherwise seem. What bothers me is the idea that the train will stop, and I will have to climb out of the train and walk back down the rickety-looking stairs to the ground, a task that looks to me far more scary than the roller-coaster itself. So while everyone else is riding up the hill anticipating that first thrilling drop and the loops and twirls and all, I'm looking at the stairs wondering whether they're the kind that would crack open if I stepped on them and I'd fall to my death that way. If roller coaster designers really wanted to scare people like me, they'd have the exit be a flimsy rope ladder.
Also, I never feel quite like the safety belt is adjusted perfectly, and those shoulder bars always have just a little too much play in them for me to feel at ease. I worry that I maybe have a little more belly than the designers intended -- especially after a stop or four at the breakfast buffet -- and that the bar didn't get down far enough and only looked locked, so I clench it to me with a fierce passion. I always want to try it on the way up the hill, to see if it is locked, but I don't because what if it isn't? Then I'm screwed and I know it. I'd rather not know it.
The Babies! agenda was much simpler than either The Boy's or Middle's. Their goal was simply: keep moving at all costs. If we stopped their stroller for a microsecond, they'd start crying and try to climb out. Maybe they were intent on getting to the sharks and the Kraken, too. I don't know. But whenever we stopped to look at something, one of us had to keep the stroller moving, spinning it and rocking it and pushing it back and forth, to keep them pacified. The alternative was to let them out and walk them holding their hands, but that would again result in inspecting each iota of Seaworld's ground, and we'd still be there.
So we mostly let them out of the stroller when inside a building, like the Shark exhibit, where they could walk around and look at stuff and inspect the floor without reducing the whole procession to a crawl. That's when I realized that there was a significant difference between what is interesting to one of the twins and what you would think would be interesting. The entrance to the shark exhibit is a series of aquariums including one where the aquarium is built into the floor below you, so as you walk over it, you see all the fish below you swimming around.
Seeing that, I got Mr F and Mr Bunches out of the stroller and walked them over it, thinking that at last I'd found something they would want to inspect and could do so to their heart's content. They were mostly uninterested. Mr F did try to pick up a fish, but finding out that there was glass between us and it, he got bored and didn't perk up until we moved on to the carpet, where there was lint to look at.
Sweetie's agenda that day, aside from worrying, was to find personalized souvenirs for the Babies!. As a person whose name is unusual, I've long stopped trying that for myself. The Babies!'s real names are different, a little, but not weird or unusually spelled, and yet we could not find anything for Mr Bunches. They have every name you can imagine, names that don't even look like names, names that sound like the noises people make when they're trying to describe what they think a gravy-covered-chocolate chip cookie from the breakfast buffet would sound like, but they don't have Mr Bunches' real name.
The Shark exhibit was early in the afternoon, and leaving it we realized it was raining. Everyone else wanted to leave, but I put Matt's advice to work. "Don't worry," I said. "It won't last long. It never lasts more than an hour." I kept saying that for over an hour, when I switched to "I think it's letting up." A half hour later, I gave up and said "Matt's a liar."
The rain eventually lightened to the point where we thought it would end, so we tried to walk a little further into the park, but then it worsened and we eventually gave up, heading back out. The point we gave up at was the part of the park that was farthest from the entrance, so we were thoroughly soaked and exhausted by the time we reached the car and the rain started up again in earnest. In all, Tropical Storm Neverend continued through the entire night.I did not want to head back to the time share yet, but there's not much to do in Orlando in the rain otherwise. I decided, therefore, that it was time to achieve the only remaining goal I had left in life.
I've gone to college, gotten married, had kids, gotten a career, started my own business, gone skydiving, been to foreign countries, met a Supreme Court justice, swam in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, visited the Grand Canyon... I have done a lot in my life, but there was one elusive goal that I had not met yet, and that was to eat at a Sonic Restaurant.
Ever since the advent of cable TV, people everywhere have been getting inundated with ads for businesses that they can't actually spend their money on, and that drives me crazy, especially when it's a business that I would definitely spend my money on, like a place where I can drive in and have them bring me my hamburger and ice cream right to my car. Sonic is that place. I'm not getting paid for any of this, and Sonic likely has no idea how I feel, so you can rest assured that this is my true emotion: I am hypnotized by the prospect of Sonic restaurants. For years now, I've been watching TV and those great ads come on with the funny people eating things that look delicious and having the time of their life, and I get excited about doing just that, only to again realize that there is not a Sonic restaurant within three states of where I live. I know that for a fact; I've checked, because one year I was going to make Sweetie go to one for our anniversary but it was too far to drive.
So Sonic seemed to me to be a dream beyond reach, something I'd hear about all my life and want to see but would never actually encounter, like tidal pools, until we decided to go to Orlando, and it occurred to me that they might have a Sonic there. So while the kids were planning trips to Seaworld and the beach and Sweetie wanted to go shopping and we were making sure there was a kiddie pool for the Babies!, I was also mapquesting a route to the closest Sonic, and I had my directions handy as we made our waterlogged exit from Seaworld.
The drive to Sonic, in the rain, took about 30 minutes, during which I became more and more anxious about whether Sonic would really exist because we seemed to be getting no closer to it. We went by various buildings and restaurants and miniature golf courses as we drove along "International Drive," which is to Orlando what 5th Avenue is to New York, only with smaller buildings and infinitely more franchise restaurants, including one called "Fish Bones," which said it served fish and steak. I'm no marketing expert, but I don't think the skeletal remains of the meal are the main selling point in luring hungry diners. Calling a restaurant "Fish Bones" did not make me think "Let's go eat there." Maybe "I hope they know the Heimlich maneuver there" but not eat there.
While I was concerned about that, The Boy was getting enraged by the miniature golf courses. These drew The Boy's ire because we saw a miniature golf course called "Pirate's Cove," and there is also a miniature golf course called "Pirate's Cove" in the Wisconsin Dells, not far from where we live, relatively speaking. The Boy thought this was an incredible ripoff, that Orlando minigolfers would think they could golf at "Pirate's Cove" when there was only one real "Pirate's Cove," ("real" being a relative concept in the world of miniature golf). We tried to mollify him by pointing out that maybe it was a franchise, that these were owned by the same person as the Wisconsin Dells site, but he remained unconvinced. I even tried pointing out to him that, historically speaking, Florida has more of a claim to pirates than Wisconsin would, because there were actual pirates in Florida at some point in the past.
"There were no real pirates," The Boy informed me. When I tried to convince him otherwise, and pointed out that Thomas Jefferson had to deal with the Barbary Coast pirates and that pirates had actually existed, he tuned me out. This was a first for me, though. The Boy has seen all the "Pirates of the Caribbean"movies, and generally speaking, if something has been in a movie or on TV, The Boy assumes it existed and actually took place. So Jurassic Park, the moon landing, Gotham City: these are taken as historical fact by The Boy. But take a historical fact like pirates and put it in a movie, and he assumes it is fake. I blame the Internet, because that's what parents do: we throw up our hands and blame the Internet. I don't know what parents blamed before the Internet. Fish Bones, maybe.
We made it to Sonic, finally, and I was so excited that I had Sweetie videotape our entrance to the parking lot. I'd share that with you, but it's too private. I get a little choked up just thinking about it. I'm going to keep it alongside our wedding video.
We pulled in, and I was overwhelmed. This might be my only chance to ever eat at a Sonic; I wanted to get everything. Plus, it all sounded really good, although that may have been that we really hadn't eaten anything since the breakfast buffet, and that gravy can only carry me so far.
It turns out that the trip would be more historic than even I can imagine, because Sonic is where I really came to understand Billy Pilgrim. Billy Pilgrim, you'll remember, was the star of Slaughterhouse-Five who had a sad experience, one that haunted him all his life, on vacation. Billy went to a cave with his dad, and the guide was going to turn out the lights and place Billy into total darkness for the first time in his life -- darkness more complete than any human being will ever experience. Only, when the guide did that, [SPOILER ALERT!] Billy was standing next to his dad, who was wearing a glow-in-the-dark watch -- so Billy missed out on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The message of that story? Dads screw things up without even trying. As I learned at Sonic, where I became Billy Pilgrim. Or maybe Middle did. Someone did, and here's how: We ordered, and I ordered the special -- the "Island Fire Burger," prominently advertised and loaded with bacon and two kinds of cheeses and sauce you could get only at Sonic.
My rule when going to a restaurant is: get what the restaurant is known for. If a restaurant specializes in one kind of food, order that. Don't go 'off the board' as they used to say in The Joker's Wild and get all tricky. I once ended up at a Red Lobster with my mom and my sister. I hate seafood so I ordered a Caesar salad and a burger. (Because I was dieting at the time, and because I had no idea what a "Caesar salad" was, I ordered it without dressing. The waitress just stared at me until Mom and Sis explained what was wrong.) My salad and burger were awful and tasted like fish anyway. At "Johnny Rocket's," once, I ordered the burger and Sweetie got chicken. When my burger came, she was jealous because her chicken was awful.
(You should note that my diets include burgers. That's the way to diet.)
While I got my "Island Fire Burger," Middle ordered a regular double cheeseburger. The food was brought out to us, we distributed it, and ate our meals, and only after eating it did we realize that Middle and I had accidentally eaten the other's sandwiches.
My once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: the first sandwich I'd ever eat from Sonic -- the only sandwich I'd ever eat from Sonic-- was the wrong one. Just like Billy Pilgrim, only in a more burger-esque way. Or Middle was just like him. I'm still not sure, but we both got the wrong burger and it was very significant in a literary sort of way.
But my burger was still really good. Let me emphasize that. It was a great burger.
In retrospect, I'm not sure how we did not realize the mixup. For my part, all I thought while eating it (besides "I can't believe I'm at Sonic! This is great!") was this: This is not as spicy as I thought. I wasn't sure which Island, exactly, the "Island Fire" was coming from, but it was definitely not one of the spicier islands; it was an island where maybe British citizens would go on holiday, like the Isle of Wight. I don't know what Middle thought as she ate her burger, but I do know that she was more disappointed than I was because for the rest of the trip, she wanted to go back to Sonic and get her "real" burger. So maybe she's Billy Pilgrim in this story. I was never very good with symbolism.
I got over my literary-esque disappointment in the best way: Ordering dessert, which posed its own dilemma because all of the desserts, too, were enticing, and there were exotic, one-of-a-kind things to order like a Coconut Creme Pie Shake. In the end, I opted for the Blue Coconut Slush drink, because "Blue" is always the best possible flavor for desserts. There is no flavor so great already that you can't make it a little greater still by making it "Blue."
With that, Day Two was essentially done, because there was nothing else to do and we were all tired from running past Seaworld exhibits to get to other Seaworld exhibits, and from keeping the Babies! moving. That and we were three hours into the rainstorm that Matt promised would last only an hour, a storm which showed no signs of letting up. So we drove back to the time share and began trying to wind the Babies! down to get some sleep, because we'd need all our energy for the next day... since the next day, we were heading for alligators.
Tomorrow: Gators! And, I reach the limit of my sample-ness.
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