Yep. It’s going to be whinge central. So if you’re not bothered with whinging or my middle-class Bogan drama please stop reading. If you feel the need to tell me to feel grateful for the opportunity to go on overseas holiday and that I have healthy children, please just don’t. Not today. Not ever. I appreciate the thought and my life, but that was not really a holiday. It was like all the things not relaxing in one massive two-week event.
I think I like holidays. I have this image of my children and me on holidays in the tropics. I’m relaxing by the pool reading some kind of light, trashy novel – newly massaged and pampered with some kind of oversweet cocktail in hand – while my children frolic in the swimming pool happily. We are all relaxed. The food is cheap and yummy. We all get along and feel grateful and appreciative for the opportunity to go on an overseas holiday all together, and love each other dearly. So here’s how it really went.
Before we even left home the children were fighting. I had argued with Miss 11 about how many shorts to pack (6 seemed like too many). Her look of death is terrifying and I see it at least twice every day.
We crammed 6 of us plus luggage into a 7 seater car and drove for about 5 hours – fighting the whole way over technology, space, what to eat, needing to go to the toilet, water bottles and stuff.
We made it to the city, picked up a 7th person, and crammed 7 people plus luggage in a 7-seater car. Made it to the airport. Got out, got checked in, got through immigration, spent $50 on completely shit food for the plane. Waiting. Waited. Flight delayed. Waited. Flight cancelled. Volcanic ash. Rebooked flight. For 3 days time. Stuck in the city. 7 people, all very disappointed. Me the most adult of the lot and having to handle the disappointment the best and not really feeling like doing that.
Spent the night at our friend’s house who had to farm out her children to fit us in. Booked into a hotel. Stayed in the city, in a hotel, in the cold, with no warm clothes. Spent another $100 on completely shit food for the plane, just from the supermarket not the airport. Did all the things I planned NOT to do on holidays like driving myself around, navigating, parking, buying breakfast food, spending all our holiday spending money on city things and not crappy Bali souvenirs.
I did catch up with some lovely friends in here, but I’m not going to talk about the good stuff because that was not part of the HELLidays. That was part of the holidays, which made up about 20% of the entire event.
Caught a flight. The airport was way busier as was Immigration. We were all much less gracious than the 3 days before but we made it. Yay.
Kids so tragic by the time we arrived that the first attempt to leave the hotel and go down the street for cheap and yummy food was met with anarchy. I took youngest two back to our hotel for swims in the pool and food, and necked two pina coladas in 3 minutes and briefly felt relaxed.
Straight up the next morning after the breakfast buffet (definitely holidays and not horrordays) we went for cheap massages. I accidently got a very dodgy Brazilian. You can read about that beauty here. I should have learnt but spent the rest of the holiday getting cheap beauty treatments that were, to be honest, cheap and mostly nasty. So I can’t complain.
I don’t shop with my children at Woolworths at home, so not sure why I thought the Discovery Mall with young children would be fun. It wasn’t.
I thought I would get to read a few books by the pool. I didn’t. In fact I believe I sat by the pool in total for 15 minutes (except that one really wicked time we hung out with my sister and her family at her resort in their cabana and drank coconuts).
The food was so cheap. They only ate hot chips though, and there were never enough of those. So we supplemented them with Oreos and juice mixed with sugar. Mostly just sugar and things unidentifiable as nutrition. I ate Mei Goreng every day, which was a great thing. That was holidays.
Every. Single. Day.
My children do not really like each other most of the time. They all (all four of them) want my UNDIVIDED attention AT ALL TIMES. Yes. I know. The maths is totally shit.
I think I thought I would be relaxed. I wasn’t. And then I go the “whine-ass bird flu” of all times and haven’t stopped whining, sneezing and wondering if my brain will ever work again. Perhaps I will never be fun or funny or clever again? Perhaps my days of greatness are over, wiped out by one simple relentless helliday???
So there you have it. We got home; even though our flight was delayed by 5 hours and we had another night in the city before we drove. Our beautiful American au pair from the last 10.5 months left us in Bali to fly home, and we picked our new beautiful French au pair up in Perth. I hope she doesn’t go back to France before the “whine-ass bird flu” lifts or she will think I am really lame. I cried when we got home to our house after a 7 hour trip (including stops to see koalas & kangaroos and then eat fish burgers) because we had no food and I realised that I HAVE NOT COOKED for the last 10 months, and my cook was somewhere on a plane on the other side of the world and I would have to cook my own dinner!! I cried! (BTW – She is so many more things than just our cook, but with the “whine-ass bird flu” it’s impossible for my brain to write all the lovely things I want to say about her. But I will soon). Luckily I found some leftover Bolognese sauce she had made in the freezer and just had to cook the pasta. And we ate. And nobody else cried.
Everything is going to be OK. Even though I swore that I would never take my children on holidays together ever again, today I booked our next holiday for this time next year and had discussions about another mid-season holiday as well. So this “whine-ass bird flu” had obviously shortened my memory. I got my eyebrows done and a REAL, PROPER nail job by an actual beauty therapist and I am starting to look better. I told her the story about the Brazilian, but am still too horrified to show anyone. It’s patchy. It’s so very, very wrong.
And right now I have 1.5 hours with no children as 2 have gone for a sleepover with their Nan and one is at gymnastics. I got straight on my MacBook and continued the whinge I started yesterday but felt too fuzzy to complete. I like the way my fancy Bioseaweed nails look while I’m typing. I am a shallow, whinging, middle-class Bogan and I am sorry.
Here’s to the hellidays. Hope they get better soon.
And it truly was this beautiful. And I didn’t whinge that time.
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