San Diego, how I love thee...

In my mind I am spontaneous. I imagine that my dream date is me coming home from [enter monotonous household errand here] to find Corey with a bag packed for me, telling me that we’re going somewhere and it’s a secret. Obviously I know that this isn’t realistic now, what with the beagador and his teething sister being bad secret keepers and all, but it’s my imagination so I’ll conjure up what I want.

In reality, any trip that takes place with less than three lists made about it causes me to break out in a rash, and if the above scenario were to happen I would have to unpack every bag, survey its contents, repack in a different order, and add another suitcase for first aid items, emergency food, and ‘just in case’ things.

Corey on the other hand, literally owned no more items than he could fit in his truck when I met him, so the Air Force has cultivated the gypsy part of him. He could absolutely go anywhere on a whim, without regard to packing, method of transportation, or responsibility at home.

I am lucky in that Corey has allowed me to handle all of our vacations my way until now, and he has even been thankful for my bags of cold medicine, granola bars, and bug repellant on different occasions.

So, when I asked him on Thursday night if he wanted to go out of town on Friday for the long weekend I had already anticipated his answer in the negative. Not only does he allow me to plan our trips, but we also now have the five-month-old Kardashian-type baby who appears to have emerged from the womb with her own set of Louis Vuitton luggage. Between Pack N Plays, Rock N Plays, play mats, play gyms, swings, slings and diaper accessories, the kid needs her own travelling bellhop. There was no way he was going to say yes.

Except, he did.

Now, I may have a reader out there who is asking me, “Well, why did you ask him then?”

It’s called passive-aggressive, and it usually works out in my favor.

So, I asked if he wanted to go to Pinetop to enjoy the cooler weather. When that wasn’t possible because my parents already had houseguests I thought the idea was tabled.

And then, because I’m so confident in my ways, I did it again the next afternoon.

“We could go to San Diego.”

Pause.

“Yeah. Let’s do that,” he says.

At this point my head started spinning in circles and I simultaneously tried to compile fourteen lists in my head all while flogging myself for my careless offerings.

Somehow, some way (I believe I blacked out a large portion of this time) we were packed and out the door in forty-five minutes.

We found a hotel that allowed Sprocket (a Marriot, thank goodness, not some scary airport motel), made reservations on the way, and got on the road at 4pm on Friday afternoon.

And, we all survived.

Brooke slept most of the way to San Diego, with several stops to eat and change diapers, while her furry brother refused to relieve himself on any surface that didn’t smell like the grass in our backyard. Nervous that he wouldn’t be able to hold it any longer, we skipped the last stop, crossing our fingers that the princess would sleep through her scheduled feeding time, and made it to the hotel by ten (she did sleep, and he did hold it until he couldn’t possibly any longer and made do with the hotel grass).

Saturday morning we got up and met my best friend and her almost-husband at Fiesta Island which is a lovely off-leash dog park where we got the shock of our lives: Sprocket is a dog. Okay, well, we always knew he was a dog, but for the first time he ACTED like a dog. He went into the ocean and swam! Sprocket normally acts like a Siamese cat around water and does everything he can to avoid it, whether it’s rain during our ten day monsoon season or an errant sprinkler while on a walk. But, he waded right in and appeared to have a great time.

Brooke dipped her toes in the water and seemed to be less impressed, and we missed capturing any of it by photograph because we are horrible parents and were busy wrangling the sheer amount of stuff that we needed to bring to the beach to haul the camera case out of the trunk.

Unfortunately, Sprocket got a mad case of dead tail from the water, which is temporary nerve damage/inflammation in the base of the tail so it hangs lifelessly (and painfully) which kept him from sleeping more than twenty minutes at a time on Saturday night. Add to that the woes of our sleepless daughter and we were lucky to emerge from the hotel room on Sunday morning with full function of our minds and limbs.

With San Diego being much more animal friendly than Phoenix, Sprocket also got to enjoy both a dinner and a lunch out with us, and the dinner restaurant even had a “Hounddog Special” that we ordered for him (grilled chicken) and brought out a water bowl (he prefers Voss…from a glass…not kidding).

We did enjoy the fact that there were other people around to dote on Brooke (she also enjoyed it, attention whore that she is) and also that we are capable of going out in public with our child without people moving to the other side of the street and crossing themselves.

We also got to spend a few minutes at Coronado Dog Park on Sunday, but it was cold, Sprocket’s tail was dead, and Brooke’s hearing aid fell out, got temporarily lost in the sand, and was located after a mad search and rescue operation (I have shaken most of the sand out) by my friend’s fiance, so we were ready to go almost as soon as we got there.

It was mostly an enjoyable trip, if for nothing else than the fact that we were able to take a last minute vacation and survive it with our two high maintenance kids. And it reminded Corey and me that the days of having fun together aren’t quite over even though slobber rags and speech therapy appointments have taken precedent over dinner and a movie.

And, with my friend’s wedding taking place in the same spot six weeks from now, it gave us the confidence to know that we can, and will, live through the trip as long as we have optimism, a dozen pacifiers and a trunk full of puppy treats.

I better go and add those to the list.