Boy, I remember the days when vacations were hard-chargin’ affairs and adventures to far off lands. We Thompsons would do ‘em up right. There were cosmopolitan ventures to New York, and laid back sojourns to hammocks in the Keys.

I remember times sitting on the dusty floors of Preservation Hall in New Orleans with a newly-bought flask whetting my whistle. We journeyed to Ireland to converse with the sheep, and even my trips to Cuba as a journalist took on tinges of vacation when the music started to drift through the Caribbean heat at night and the rum began to flow.

I remember them just like they were yesterday, even though they’re a long time gone now.

I think of this because the Thompson family will head out on a new adventure soon — our latest vacation. And this time we’re going somewhere very exotic and out-of-the-way … Orlando! Yippee.

What a different world it is with a 2 -year-old. A few years back, if I was told I was going on a trip like this, I would have said, “No thanks, I’ll go to work instead.” I was a little bit of a vacation snob.

But that said, the funny thing is, I’m not complaining. In fact, I’m excited, even thrilled. Part of me is a bit confused. We’re doing everything I used to dread. We’re staying in a Disney resort where my pillow will probably whisper in my ear, “Buy more Mickey Mouse toys.” We’re spending a day at Sea World, which is nothing more than a big bowl of fish. We’re scheduling time (I mean, we have got it blocked out!) to do nothing but swim in a giant pool until the sun has baked our skin like overcooked bacon.

We’re going to eat so much ice cream that the scooper man behind the bar will pull up and say, “You know, I think you’ve had enough. Can I call you a cab?” We’re going to sleep in and buy expensive trinkets and eat lots of lousy, overpriced food. I’ve got to tell you, I might even buy a shirt that screams in the tackiest tourist colors, “My family went to Orlando and they’re still paying off their credit cards.”

Is there something wrong with me to be this excited?

I don’t think it’s that my tastes have changed (don’t expect to see me in Bermuda shorts, socks with sandals or a hat like Gilligan wore.) Rather, maybe it’s my priorities that have been altered. With a daughter, and a young one at that, I’m reconsidering how you define vacation, and especially fun.

Vacations used to be more self-centered it was about MY enjoyment. But there’s something so — how do I explain it? — something so gratifying about putting this little person’s enjoyment first. I will stop at nothing to make sure SHE has fun.

Oh, and we’re going to tear it up! The kid is already juiced. She doesn’t even know what Sea World is, but you mention we’re going there and her eyes light up and she runs about the house waving her hands like there are hornets in her shorts.

I could have just told her we were going to the IRS audit center. What does she know? When you’re a kid, it doesn’t matter where you’re going, just so long as it’s somewhere fast. She’s into it, and frankly, I am too.

I’ve thought about packing already, and normally I don’t do that until 15 minutes after we leave. I’ve started training and even heat-conditioning myself by sitting in the car with the windows up and the air conditioning off. I’m trying to simulate what it will be like to trek through an Orlando theme park in the dead of summer, but I can’t get the car hot enough.

In the next couple of days I’ll get the credit card waxed and then I’ll be truly ready to go.

Ready to experience an Orlando vacation for the first time as a parent. It’ll be a different vacation for sure, but some things won’t change — at least I’ll still have my trusty flask.

OK, I have officially had it. I am through, absolutely through. Here we are, something like four months out from the next presidential election and I just can’t take it any more.

It’s not the candidates that have me going coo-coo. That whole song and dance is at least entertaining. What I’m talking about are the polls — the endless, non-stop, daily, earth-shuttering, hurry-up-and-read-it-’cus-a-new-one’s-coming-in-five-minutes polls.

They’re everywhere. You take a shower — there’s a poll in there. You try to eat your breakfast cereal — there’s a poll in there. Anywhere you look, there’s a new poll.

Look, I understand wanting to take the pulse of the nation, but aren’t we going a little overboard here? This isn’t taking the pulse — this is a 24-hour MRI.

We don’t need this much information. Take a few polls every couple of months and be done with it. I think we can afford a little suspense in our lives. Just a little.

But if regular polls aren’t bad enough, I’m noticing a new trend: stupid polls. At least with regular polls, there’s relevant information that doesn’t knock the collective IQ of the nation down a notch or two. They basically just ask potential voters which candidate will get their hanging chad, and questions like that.

Continue Reading »

Boy, add a little water to a Florida yard and in no time you have what looks like an Amazonian rain forest. The kind of place that you fear to venture to far out as the weeds and the critters might just carry you away. Mostly the weeds.

My yard is in full bloom, and most of it is quite pretty. The firecracker plants in the front are little red refueling stations for two neighborhood hummingbirds, and the butterfly bushes are attracting their fair share of butterflies. I have pineapples on the pineapple plants, lemons on the lemon tree and the herbs in my daughter’s backyard garden (planted in an old timey, four-footed bathtub) smelling herby.

Much of it is paradise, but the rest was turning to jungle. A natural yard is both beautiful and bedeviling, especially when it rains.

Prolonged droughts can leave all-but the hardiest plants wilted and wounded. Ours are very hardy, and that just makes them more jumpy when the rains come. Steady and frequent rains make little plants, and other bits of green, stretch their spindly legs and venture out like bears after a long winter slumber. They start out slow, just testing the land, before rip-roaring out of the gate and swallowing up all in sight.

Continue Reading »