why this was a rather long "break"

Even if you spend it in paradise, I think two weeks is a very long break to take from reality. Ideally, I would spend a two week vacation with a private jet and babysitter in tow, traveling almost effortlessly from one country to the next, joyfully balancing family time with couple time, exploring remote corners of the world so different from the one we call home. I'd just love to able to share the discovery of foreign peoples and environments with my children by day and then mix it up with the locals every evening with my husband. I'd bring along my violin, a favorite travel accessory, to help me connect with folks from other cultures through the universal language of music. We'd chat with strangers, dine and perhaps even dance under the stars, and sit side by side gazing at a vast body of water from a new vantage point.

But this was not at all what we did with the past two weeks of school vacation. I know your time is limited so I will only write about the first week, what we have been referring to, since we bought it in June, as "our family vacation". Paul could only afford to be away from work for a few days, and with my business lately having become all but extinct, and the future of Paul's job lately hanging in limbo, we were on a very limited budget. We decided to drive south, spend 4 nights at a beloved resort and drive home again. Before climbing into the driver's seat of our family minivan on December 18, Paul had worked almost 7 weeks straight, without enjoying more than a single day off at a time, even for Thanksgiving. He drove all day until 10 at night, listening with me to a book on tape while the kids negotiated the backseat dvd player, then stopped to sleep in a Hampton Inn in Georgia, and continued southbound on I75 early the next morning until we reached the Florida Turnpike, and eventually, Port St Lucie.

Our long journey ended with all 5 of us in high spirits as we pulled into the parking circle at our "happy place", Club Med Sandpiper. We had just 4 days to enjoy there, but we were ready to make every moment count. The weather was sunny and mild and the forecast for the next few days looked promising. The person checking us in paid me a high compliment - I was the nicest person who had checked in so far (this was the third day since the reopening) and the coolest mom. I was flattered, but thought it was so very easy to be nice and cool - like my three kids, I was just so happy to be out of the car and eager to be on vacation. We'd gotten a good deal on our package because the resort was reopeningafter 9 months of renovation. We had booked two unrenovated rooms ("ready for you in just a few hours!") hoping to avoid the chaos and surprise that seems to accompany all renovations, but unfortunately that was just what was in store for us anyway.

Today, Paul has been back at work for over a week, my sister and her kids have come and gone, but it's the kids first day back at school. No sooner did I return from dropping them off and walking the dog, but I am on the phone to the Club Med U.S. headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. The guest relations professional on the phone informs me that this week is dedicated to answering Sandpiper guest complaints with various offers of compensation.

"Very well," I said, "I will wait to hear from you later this week. I just wanted to make sure you got the letter I left when I checked out."

After resolving several times each day to maintain a positive attitude, soak up the sunshine, do yoga daily and focus on having fun, I surprised myself at the end of our stay by writing a letter containing 19 (multi part) items of complaint. I began the letter at 1 am on our last night at Club Med, after our room was assigned to another guest, who walked in with his luggage while we were putting our kids to bed. We worked through the mix-up, contacted the front desk and, after taking extra time tucking our boys in for the night, headed through "the village" to the nightclub for a cocktail and a bit of dancing (our nightly ritual both for blowing off steam and burning off the extra calories invariably absorbed from buffet-style dining). I was still planning to laugh off the entire series of unfortunate events that dotted our short vacation until we returned to our rooms at midnight only to discover that we were locked out - our key cards had been deactivated when the rooms were reassigned earlier in the evening!

For me, that was the last straw, the push I needed to start pen moving across page after page of paper. In the end, one hour each morning was not nearly enough yoga to shrug off all the incompetence and lack of consideration shown to us during the past four days. Instead of continuing to look on the bright side, or merely being thankful that our room was not flooded with sewage during our stay, or infested with roaches, as was the case for other guests, I snapped. This was a rare and hard earned vacation and it had now been all but ruined in a number of ways that I was finally prepared to sit down and count up.

Without torturing you nice, patient readers with excessive detail, the items of complaint included:

* a cleaning staff that evidently smoked in our rooms
* camp counselors who led kids to a soccer field, held roll call on the soccer field and then cancelled soccer, and led the kids back to an empty room for the next hour instead
* offering coloring book pages and crayons to 8 and 10 year olds as "today's art project"
* a front desk staff that refuses to change dollar coins for quarters to operate the unmarked but decidedly broken laundry machines (so that I lost an entire sunny morning to one load of laundry)
* a bar without any basic liquors (kahlua, amaretto, frangelico, bailey's, grand marnier) or the knowlege to operate the new pina colada machine
* a missing (favorite) archery range (oh well)
* construction folks wherever you look, including those working on a tantalizing pool and hot tub that would not be open until after our departure
* little bulldozers tamping down pieces of dead sod next to you while you "recreate"
* trucks that follow behind them, spraying the brown sod a bright shade of green
* painters slapping stinky black paint on a new fence beside your pool chaise
* opening the newly painted gate that evening and finding you hand covered with black paint
* being sent out as a family on a catamaran without being assessed as to our collective weight, so that we needed to be towed back in from the bay

This is just half the list, but you get the picture...and to think, I just wrote a song about dreaming of this vacation right before we went on it (see White Chanukah, below)!

I explained in my letter that Club Med Sandpiper has been our family's happy place for several years now - since our youngest kids were both in diapers - and we had been counting on it to continue to be that for many years. I asked Club Med that they induce us to return by comping us our next vacation, explaining that we would otherwise have to start searching for an alternative place to enjoy our few days of winter vacation together, if we are lucky enough to have one next year. I dearly hope that Paul is still employed next winter and that we can again get away for a little break from reality, but what marriage can afford a two day road trip with only chaos waiting at the end of the road? I don't want to push our luck.