Going North

David never ceases to be amazed at how long it takes a group of ladies to organize an outing. If where to go for dinner takes a 10 minute convo, it stands to reason that planning a weekend getaway would take ten times as long. So, for weeks, we went back and forth, mostly about location:

Vegas?
Nah.
New Orleans?
Just went.
Miami?
Next time.

And then someone suggested Montreal.

Close.
Hip.
Speak a different language.
Serve French fries doused in gravy and cheese cruds.
Done.

It delivered on all those things. Except for the primary consideration. Montreal isn't what I'd call "close" to New York, unless you're comparing it to a drive to Mount Rushmore. I realized this as we sat in the car, on hour 9 of our raucous, wild girls getaway. Apparently, its only supposed to take six and a half hours but when its 106 degrees out and cars actually catch on fire on the highway, it slows the flow of traffic a bit.

We talked about sex.
We talked about careers.
We talked about the things we hate about our husbands and the dumb fights we have over and over again.
We talked more about sex.
We talked about kids and car seats and what to pack in a lunchbox and how long it takes them to go to sleep and whether or not they should have developed a conscience by age four.
We talked about old boyfriends.
We talked about our weddings and where we bought the dress and if we wore a veil.
We talked about our mothers.
And we were still only halfway there.

I'd say between the trip there and back, we squeezed in approximately 100 therapy sessions.

Montreal was charming - hotel was SWANK, the kind with zebra skin stools and toilets enclosed in glass stalls for no apparent reason. The endtable was carefully laid with large bottles of Grey Goose and Maker's Mark, the which probably cost a months' mortgage for a shot.

"Oooh look! A baseball cap with the hotel name on it!" my friend Miriam exclaimed.
"Don't touch that cap! Its not included! Its a trap."

The only real hitch was that our room was located directly, and I do mean, directly above the nightclub. I should have realized something was up when I saw the box of earplugs on the nightstand. Of course, I was too scared to touch the earplugs for fear they weren't included in the room and I'd find a charge of $32 EAR PLUGS on my bill upon checkout.

When we turned in at what I thought was an impressive 12:30am, the nightclub was just heating up and the bass was causing the bed to vibrate. I stuck the earplugs in, put my head under a very plush pillow and promptly willed my ears to cease functioning. That worked pretty well until I woke up a few hours later to a massive, white noise which sounded like our room was getting crushed in an enormous garbage disposal. It went on and on. It occurred to me that maybe something was amiss. But then I fell back asleep and when I woke up, we were still there, so I guess it was some rave-related incident.

The next morning my friend Gigi woke at 6 and went for a run before having a leisurely, European-paced breakfast with Miriam. I continued to sleep. When they rolled back into the room at 10:40, they were aghast to find me in bed. Ten hours? Sounds about right.

Once I'd had some coffee to shake off the post-sleep-binge fatigue, we were off to sight-see.

Notre Dame. Check.
Musee des Beaux Arts. Check.
Viuex Montreal.
Poutine. Check.
Canadian flags for the children? Check.

Another night of dreaming about garbage disposals while getting a bass thumping. Next morning, we were up and in the car by 9, ready for another marathon of talk therapy.

It wasn't how the boys would do it but it was just what the doctor ordered.

No more romantic getaways, please

You couldn’t pay me to go on a romantic getaway with my husband. No way. Not happening. And I’ll tell you precisely why:

Every single time we try one of these weekend getaways, one of us falls terribly ill.

Not just a cold or a bad headache or some pre-menstrual cramps but a stomach flu or mysterious raging fevers. And this weekend it happened AGAIN. This makes the fourth of fifth time in the past year or two.

David and I drove up to the Hudson Valley to attend the wedding of my dear friend Amelia, whose letters from Port au Prince I posted after the earthquake. Amelia kindly invited the children to the wedding and I kindly declined to take them. The last wedding they went to, my cousin’s, was such an ordeal we’ll never forget it. Apparently, neither will my cousin. Last year she told me the clearest memory she has of her wedding ceremony was Primo yelling, “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO THE CAR!!!!!” as David dragged him kicking and screaming down the aisle, after he had a tantrum during the wedding vows. So we don’t take our kids to weddings, if at all possible. Plus, since our own anniversary is coming up we thought we’d make a romantic weekend of it, have some steamy loving in the Courtyard Marriot. Cue Marvin Gaye.

On the drive up, I had definite presentiments of illness. Scratchy throat, growing feeling of weakness. By the time we reached Poughkeepsie, I called Amelia to let her know we couldn’t make it over to her parents’ house forthe pre-wedding pizza party. I was feverish, shaking, seriously ailing.

And so it was that our first romantic night was spent with me shivering in the hotel bed watching The Real Housewives of New York City (OMG my new favorite show, I was loving it, though maybe it was the fever) while David drove up and down the highway looking for Tylenol, cough drops and a pair of pajamas, since I’d neglected to pack them and a sick person needs her pajamas.

Then we ate hamburgers from the diner next door in our bed while I moaned in misery.

In the middle of the night, the chills came. I despise the chills. There is little worse than the feeling that your blood is freezing in your veins. I hobbled around the hotel room in search of more blankets. There were none. I called the front desk and was sent to voice mail. SO helpful. Then I put on my sweater, David’s fleece jacket AND my own jacket, and laid all the towels from the bathroom on top of me, under the blanket.

Are you getting a picture of the hot loving? The R and R? The marital renewal??

Raw suckage, I tell you.

Next morning, I propped myself up, Weekend at Bernies style, and survived the wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and I cried like I was making French onion soup. By 5pm I was back in the hotel bed, shivering and moaning. Repeat Friday night feverish festivities.

Sunday morning, though, we received an EXTRA treat. David and I were roused by a mindblowing, earsplitting fire alarm going off. The alarm was going off in our room as well as in the halls and everyone else’s room in the hotel. I can not possibly describe how loud the fucking thing was except it reminded me of those devices hardware stores sell which emit sounds at a frequency that mice hate to keep the vermin from your house (don’t work, by the way, our mice just frolicked around them). So we stumbled around throwing our belonging in our bag, half-mad from the roar of the alarm, tripping over bottles of Tylenol.

I feel REJEUVENATED; let me tell you, after that weekend away.

Maybe on our next romantic getaway, we can both get root canals.

R & R & R

David and I haven’t had a night away from the kids since last winter and after the rigors of buying an apartment and moving and starting both kids in new schools, we’ve been pining for some R and R, and hey, an extra R for romance wouldn’t hurt. So we convinced my parents to take their darling grandchildren for the weekend.

On Friday, we loaded them into my parents’ car with accompanying loveys and favorite bedtime books and then we wasted no time and proceeded directly to Jack the Horse Tavern for dinner by candle light and some stimulating argument. Yes, David and I find that whenever we have some alone time, the very first thing we must get out of the way is a big ole’ fight. There’s no way to bypass the argument and take a shortcut directly to intimacy and affection – we just have to fight a bit and then we’ll be as happy as honeymooner for the rest of the weekend.

One getaway, we treated ourselves to a two hour argument of private versus public school, just for the sake of fighting since we agree public school is best for our kids and also, our only choice. Another time we argued all night about why he was facebook friends with his highschool girlfriend and how she fact that she wrote emails from her husband’s account meant, to my eyes, that she was oppressed and lacking a self separate from her identity as wife and mother.

This weekend, we didn’t focus on one particular subject. I just had a glass of prosecco which got me in a fighting mood – that’s the effect alcohol has on me these days – and then I acted the part of a miserable magpie for the rest of the night, including during the performance of The New Electric Ballroom at St. Ann’s Warehouse, which my sweet husband had gotten tickets for

“Oh God, I hope this isn’t another piece of depressing theater,’ I moaned.

“Well, its Irish drama,” replied David, “So chances are, yes.”

My single sentence sum-up: One of the most brilliant scripts I’ve heard in a long time, impeccably performed and so freaking dismal and bleak you want to bang your head on a brick wall as soon as its over just to feel some relief.

David and I come back to our blissfully quiet apartment and though it seemed I would pass out instantly from the glass of prosecco I was not about to let the evening pass us by without some romance. So I put on my most raggedy-ass baggy fleece PJS, threw myself face down on the couch and lay motionless for five minutes to work up the energy and then I said, with my face still buried in a couch cushion: Wanna have sex?”

David laughed: “Are you joking?”

You shouldn’t ask a mean drunk such a question: “I don’t know WHY you are LAUGHING,” I replied, “You should be jumping for JOY!”

“You’re lying facedown on the couch like a person in a coma,” he countered.

“Oh so I’m supposed to SEDUCE you now?” I shrieked the picture of allure.

I persuaded him to my position, which was a good thing because shortly afterwards the man fell ill. Gastrointestinal kind of ill. By the next morning, he was fully in the throws of a nasty stomach bug. So no trip to the Berkshires as planned.

But hey, who needs the Berkshire’s stunning fall foliage when you can clean your apartment and pay bill all day while your husband moans on the sofa and watched Real World marathons?

“I can’t believe you’re sick now and we can’t have another romantic evening,” I complained.
“You call that a romantic evening?” David said.

“Well, I was only so mean because I thought I had a second night to make it up to you!” I reasoned.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” he offered, none too kindly.

When we called to check in with my parents, they told us my grandmother and Primo were both upchucking, too. Nothing like thinking of your child vomiting in someone else's bathroom to make you feel guilty and awful.

But by Saturday night, David was on the mend so I dragged him to see a movie with me – New York, I Love You. Here’s my single sentence sum-up of that one:

Someone should have forced most of the directors to stretch themselves a bit and find new devices, beyond the quintessential lighting of the cigarette, for characters who are strangers to meet: say, waiting for the bus or the funicular or the light to change, riding the subway or an elevator, serving on jury duty, getting a hot dog from the vendor. Leave the compulsive cigarette lighting to the Parisians.

But it did put us in the mood for baguettes and coffee in a bowl, so Sunday morning, with David fully recovered, we brunched at a nearby Pain Quotidian and after a decent night’s sleep (would have been better had Omaha steaks not called at 9am) and no alcohol anywhere in sight, we chatted merrily and cozies up.

Mission R & R & R accomplished. By hook or by crook, baby.