Ah, 69 posts! That mystical number that makes every teenaged boy - and apparently my dad - grin in that naughty-boy way.
After telling the story to a friend, I realized that I should set aside my embarrassment for the greater good and in the name of humor, and recount our Honeymoon trip to you all, my darling Blog-o-philes!
It was our first real holiday as a married couple, and I had prepared the most AMAZING Thanksgiving dinner ever. Now, if you know me in the slightest, you'll know my absolute abhorrence for cooking. Even heating stuff in the microwave is iffy at times for me. I've actually destroyed Top Ramen (if you leave it cooking too long it turns into like this weird pale hot Jello with fat bloated noodle-worms in it.) And with that visual, if you're queasy, stop reading here. (Don't say you weren't warned.)
Back to the focus of the story. It was our Honeymoon. That blessed, delightful and magical experience where people are always nice to you, room service is at your beck and call, and you're positively showered with champagne, strawberries and well-wishes. In theory.
As previously mentioned, I had made a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving dinner for my husband, my brother and his girlfriend. I read recipes, scrubbed potato skins, opened cans of yams, sliced celery, rubbed herbs into the turkey skin, bought a new baster, prepped, cleaned, prepared, thawed, rinsed, baked, boiled, and mashed for days in preparation. I was up ungodly early to put the bird in the oven. I had timed everything perfectly. This would be a Thanksgiving to remember! Particularly as it is my husband's favorite holiday and, as mentioned, our first as a married couple, I wanted it to be PERFECT! And because I was nervous about how to do all of it, I only called my mother approximately 99 times in the three days that I prepped for the blessed event. Possibly 103 times. Okay, we'll split the difference... 101 estimated times. Seriously I called her A LOT.
The turkey was done. My brother and his girlfriend were running late. I had everything ready. I had worked for days and sacrificed much (similar to the year I randomly decided to make banana bread for everyone as Christmas presents... and days later every surface in our kitchen was covered with mini pans of cooling banana bread.) There was sacrifice, not only the bird, but also including that horrible part of Thanksgiving - getting up wayyyyyy early to put said bird into the oven (which you will ALSO all know that I loathe early morning more than anything except spicy seafood. And llamas. Which my husband loves. Spicy seafood, that is, not llamas. I think he's fairly ambivalent about llamas. A true case of opposites attracting in regards to food each of us considers edible. I will NEVER understand his love of Kimchi. It's in our marriage vows. I am not joking. I digress.)
My brother was late. I panicked. My husband, ever practical, decided we were eating. On time. While it was hot. And we did. That year I managed to restrain my inner glutton and only eat MOST of the brown-sugar cinnamon pineapple marshmallow-topped yams and not ALL of them (particularly as my husband doesn't care for them, which is perfectly fine by me! If that was ALL Thanksgiving consisted of, that would probably suit me just fine. Oh, and mashed potatoes & gravy. Though I cheated and bought a jar of gravy. I'm not that advanced a chef, and NOBODY likes lumpy gravy.) We ate, and a while later (31 minutes, but who was checking?) my brother and his girlfriend arrived. They also ate, and while not quite piping-hot, still all food was considered safe for consumption. (This is relevant to the later part of my tale.)
Afterwards in that after-feasting somnambulism - that heavy, bloated stupor following eating far too many calories, I was still a good little pretend housewife/Betty Crocker, and packaged up the leftovers for my brother to take as we were leaving early for the plane for our much-anticipated Honeymoon.
Particularly highly anticipated as we waited for 3 full months to take it post-wedding, and as my husband had me 99% convinced we were going to
Mongolia. In December. In the Northern Hemisphere. Where winter lives at the same time it does in OUR part of the world in winter in December.... Except here we have civilization and electricity and forced-air heat. And there they have yak dung fires in yak fur yurts while drinking fermented yak milk! I told him we'd freeze to death! I pleaded with him to take pity on me and change our tickets. I pouted. I sulked. I freaked out and called my Mom trying to explain global geography and my terrible all-encompassing fear that my husband slept through it in elementary school, and through Earth & Space Science in High School as well, and somehow his education lacked the basic knowledge that THE ENTIRE EARTH is tilted, and the part that is tilted away from the sun is COLDER and therefore has winter. The entire hemisphere - all of it - all winter! All at the same time!
HOW DID HE MISS THIS?!
She laughed, but tried to take me seriously (probably just relieved that I wasn't calling again for another explanation on how to make lump-less gravy which I never followed and cheated by buying a jar of gravy anyway... though everything else - save the cranberry sauce - (which I LIKE jellied from a can, thankyouverymuch!) I did, in fact, make by hand. Yes, even the stuffing. And by the way, dry bread for stuffing is NOT the same as croutons. I'm pretty sure it's actually recycled cardboard from cereal boxes. Anyway, the point is that I was afraid of freezing to death on my Honeymoon and never getting to have sex with my husband on our OWN HONEYMOON because I would be too cold to expose any portion of my skin, though finally my hubby would have to cave in to my desire for cuddling because out of basic necessity we would have to be pressed close together for sheer warmth in order to avoid dying of hypothermia! (Thankfully my mother never thinks I'm overly dramatic. And she enrolled me in theater at a young and tender age. I even got a scholarship for theater, but I dropped it after I found out there wasn't a major in "Melodrama." I'm just sayin'...)
(My mental picture, though more furry... and I forgot about Mongolian ponies, which I actually would be excited about. If it were summer.)
After pouting, cajoling and threatening didn't seem to have a noted influence on my husband, I demanded that I get a parka as my Honeymoon gift. With real fur. A real animal that lived in the tundra or taiga, or whatever the steppes of frozen frigid Siberia... er... Mongolia are called. If an animal had lived and survived in that fur, then I figured I may have a chance of making it myself. And if an animal had to die so that I might live, so be it. That's Darwin. Or fashion. Or something. As an animal lover and devoted Humane Society advocate, I'll send my apologies to PETA later, but for the moment I was only concerned about hypothermia and losing digits to frostbite.
(What I imagine I would look like in a parka. I've read that it's good to have a positive self-image. Because if I were freezing to death in a fur-trimmed parka in Mongolia, my eye makeup would, of course, be expertly applied!)
If you haven't already realized, my husband is incredibly good at exploiting my gullible streak. (I know, you're shocked, right? You thought I was immune to it, but no! Right there in the Dictionary is my name as the definition of gullible. Don't believe me? Okay, well, I had to look it up too the first time someone told me too, don't feel bad.) He's VERY persuasive. He has these afore-mentioned blue eyes. He seems truly sincere. He is genuine. And he has endurance. He kept this gag going for something along the lines of a solid month and a half! Every time my convictions would waver, there he was, seemingly hurt by my adamant protestations of spending 9 days freezing my buttocks clear off, telling me I'd trusted him with the travel arrangements, and convincing me that it couldn't POSSIBLY be colder than our northern winters... And I believed him. Mostly.
Part of me still held onto this tenuous thread of hope that I could pack a bikini, a snorkel mask and fins and we'd be okay. But 99% of me was certain we were going to our deaths. Imagine my unadulterated delight when I came home and he mentions casually that "something came" for me and it was on the bed. Skeptical, I had a fleeting thought that it was odd that an envelope, package or other assorted thing which was capable of being delivered wouldn't be on the table where the mail typically lived, but instead, as per his direction, in the bedroom.
Taking off my shoes and giving him a wary kiss, I rounded the corner to the bedroom to find.... a WHOLE BED SPREAD OUT WITH AIRFARE, HOTEL CONFIRMATION AND OTHER ASSORTED POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES FOR GLORIOUS, SUNNY, AND DEFINITELY
TROPICAL HAWAII!!!!!!!!
Elated doesn't begin to cover it! He'd planned the entire trip, but left me the choice of our activities, and squealing like an elementary school girl I literally scooped the brochures, tickets, confirmations and maps into my arms and bounded around like a Golden Retriever puppy on speed! I quickly booked a helicopter tour of the volcano, a submarine tour of the reef, a snorkeling trip reputed to have the best viewing of all the varieties of fish and sea creatures, and got info on the planetarium, the coffee plantation, the sacred place of refuge and more! So when I say that our Honeymoon was long-awaited and MUCH anticipated, I hope you will hereby discover my true meaning.
We went to sleep that night, me with what I assumed were travel butterflies, and my husband with his characteristic 2 second lights-out routine. But all was not well in the South, and by this I in no way mean the former Confederated States of America. My butterflies got upgraded to those rock-crusher bugs from Starship Troopers and they were pulling double-duty overtime. I got that coppery-tinged taste and the excessive salivation, the stomach cramps started in earnest as if they'd only been playing with me prior to this, and before I could comprehend what was going awry, I was bolting for the bathroom. Thanksgiving was only pleasant traveling one-way, as on the return trip particularly that delicious candied cranberry sauce was akin to throwing up cayenne peppers, or battery acid, or carbolic acid, or something equally hideous shot from the eyes of some sci-fi monster dissolving everything it touches. In between bouts, I laid on the bath mat covered in a towel and cursing my guts, turkeys, cranberries and life in general.
Goddessbless my husband, as he comes in bleary-eyed to check on me and sees a miserable creature huddled around the base of the throne covered in a bath towel. Now, here let me profess my eternal love once again for this man I married. Truly a better husband has never crossed the face of this Earth. This man has seen me incapacitated by pain after a car crash left me unable to get out of bed, has literally dressed me from underthings down to putting on my shoes, and now he comes to see if I'm okay while I'm puking my face off. AND he comes and brings me a blanket and a glass of water. Having fully purged the entire contents of (I swear!) the previous WEEK, I thought a little nap on the bathroom rug before our early flight would fix me. But the worst was yet to come.
Our flight was scheduled to leave at some ghastly hour like 6 am (which to a non-morning person is like you staying UP until, say, 3 am, which I do routinely. Don't you judge me. Night owl blood flows in my veins.) However, I was going to be thrice-damned if I was missing our Honeymoon to a tropical island paradise (which held even more special meaning for me as a few weeks after my husband and I began dating we attended a martial arts camp held on Oahu!) I didn't get my seal-fur parka, but I DID have a bikini packed and I was determined to use it!
After a few mild protestations of being left to sleep on the bath mat after multiple rounds of regurgitation of a disturbingly yam-orange and cranberry-red vomitus (let me tell you how utterly frightening it is to puke red... even if it DOES hold semi-recognizable chunks of cranberry in it...) my husband got me and my cramping abdomen back to bed. I was too out of it to even protest when he kissed my forehead (puke-breath aside and thank goodness he didn't go for the lips! AH the horror!) and I felt as though I barely closed my eyes when I had to get up again. Thankfully my travel anxiousness usually has me packing my bags a week or more in advance with multiple un-packing and re-packing stages to be sure I haven't forgotten anything (which I invariably do despite checklists AND 12 re-packings, each time stuffing more in until my zippers literally strain like Atlas under the weight of the world...) and so he drove us to the airport without further ado.
(Instead of the Earth, here substitute wife's luggage. In my defense, we WERE going for longer than a week...)
Where we live it's cold in the winter, as I mentioned regarding that whole phenomenon of the Earth tilting away from our dear star Sol, but I knew we were going to a place that never goes below 60 degrees on a bad day! So I had only a light jacket, and in my sleep-deprived and stomach-acid scorched esophageal breathless panting, my bag was nearly more than I could manage. Thankfully my husband can be quite the gentleman, and babysat my bag through the endless security clearance line at zero-dark-thirty in the morning. Winding our way through the ropes, my stomach thought it wasn't quite finished tormenting me. To my absolute horror I felt a SBD seeping out. I surreptitiously glanced about, worried that someone might have heard me. Thankfully, all seemed well. For a moment.
My beloved turns to look at me with a look of wide-eyed horror as he claps a hand over his face, and all I can do is shrug in an utterly helpless manner as I hear people around me shift uncomfortably and start to choke and cough. It was vile. Nothing like that should ever emanate from anyone's body, ever. And despite his efforts, under his watery eyes and hand over his mouth, my husband started chuckling. There can't be anyone else on Earth that wanted to crawl UNDER the airport linoleum more than I did at that moment.
Trapped in the security check line, suffocating in my GI stench, I was utterly miserable. To his credit, my adorable man wipes the tears (whether from laughter or simply his eyes weeping from methane it is unclear) and whispers to me with pride, "That was YOU?!" with this gleam that says he'd never been prouder in his life. I don't understand him, but I love him tremendously for not making a horrible situation any worse for me as I was nearly in violent tears myself from a potent recipe of methane + embarrassment! And here he was looking at me as though I'd run a marathon or some equivalent accomplishment.
I, however, felt no pride, I just wanted to get out of that noxious cloud (I swear you should've been able to SEE it at that point,) to get through security without incident (Oh please do not have them pat me down, I'm not sure I could control another SBD and they may quarantine me for a search for illicit knockout gas!) I was almost weaving on my feet I was so tired from my early morning with the prep of the turkey, my bathmat nap under my towel, and I just wanted to stagger onto the plane and sleep for a few blessed hours. It's a long way to Hawaii from where we were.
Regrettably, the ONLY leg of our journey that my husband and I weren't to be sitting together placed me squarely next to Typhoid Mary (not that I'm claiming herein to be fresh as a daisy my ownself, but still!) "Mary" was going to go on a skiing holiday, but much to her eternal dismay, she'd contracted a horrible disease which she referred to completely untruthfully as "a little head cold." I immediately cringed away from her, turning the air vent to be sure that in no manner could possibly direct germs from her red-rimmed eyes, seeping nose, cracked lips and infernal snuffling toward me. If it had been possible to obtain a WWII gas-mask and sit in a tub of hand sanitizer up to my chin for the duration of the flight, I would have. Trust me.
Instead, I mutely cast my best pleading and equally horrified glances at my husband, who attempted to negotiate a re-assignment of seating with his seatmate, but failed to do so, as that person most likely also recognized the symptoms of typhoid when they saw it and wanted no further potential contamination themselves. Thankfully, on the flight following, I was able to drop my increasingly heavy head onto my husband's shoulder and sleep. I was even awake to take a picture as we flew over San Francisco and I actually saw the Golden Gate Bride and captured it on my camera from the plane itself!
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| Golden Gate Bridge from the air! |
And then there was nothing but the shimmering ripples of the ocean and the fleece-backed clouds. I may have dozed, I was carefully sipping my Ginger Ale, and may have even gotten a Biscoff cookie softened up enough to wriggle it's way down my acid-singed gullet. The details are a little unclear as mostly I was terrified to let another "bomb" go in the recycled air of the cabin and everyone knowing that it was me. I had tragic visions of a stewardess confining me to the tiny airport lavatory for the remainder of the flight and not getting to see Hawaii at all. (Don't ask me, my imagination works like that.)
Finally, the dark humps of Hawaii's islands loomed into view, rising out of that shimmering silver expanse of ocean, and after flying over lush rainforest, dry blonde grasslands, and black lava fields we touched down.
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| Hawaii looming out of the clouds |
Me with a growing fuzziness in my head, and that niggling feeling that the burning in my throat was no longer merely stomach acid burns. Still, it was our Honeymoon, and I soldiered on, thankfully leaving all the driving to my beloved. And people ARE nice to you on your Honeymoon.... the car rental lady offered us a free upgrade to a red Mustang convertible, which my husband looked like the afore-mentioned teenage boy at the prospect, though I stingily declined in favor of our hamster-mobile, a Nissan Versa. Had I know how small the "big island" of Hawaii really was, I should've caved and let him have his sporty car. Though gasoline was easily $2+/gallon higher than back home, and I *was* for the record, attempting to budget. After checking into our beautiful ocean-side hotel, we took a driving tour of the entire island, which occupied the majority of that day. I was exhausted, and could think of nothing better than crawling between the sheets of that giant King-sized bed, but this was our Honeymoon, dammit, and I was GOING to have a great time. Little did I know what was in store...
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| Welcome to Kona! |
(*Part 2, to be continued*)
http://sirensecho.blogspot.com/2013/07/happy-honeymooners-sort-of-part-2.html
Thank you to: http://lasermom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/sunearth.png
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/hawaii/map.GIF
http://www.voxboxcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/turkey1.jpg
http://globalholidaytour.com/wp-content/gallery/mongolia/YurtCampinWinter-Mongolia.jpg
http://vonpipmusicalexpress.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/kate-bush-50-words-for-snow1.jpg
http://whentulipsbloom.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/atlas2.jpg
All other photos are my personal ones.
