Pee At Sea

Recently, when I mentioned that so-and-so enjoys reading my blog, my mother sarcastically responded "that's got to be pretty time consuming." Ouch. Yep, time to get back to posting.

Last month we took a 7-day Disney cruise and spent an additional three nights at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge. I returned relaxed, vaguely tan, and definitely poorer. A couple of weeks later and the tan and relaxed state are long gone, while the poorer part, unfortunately, appears to be sticking. There are the memories though too, and they were worth every one of the hundreds of thousands of pennies that were spent. Predictably, a great time was had by all. While I won't bore you with details of our many trips to the pool, beaches on Caribbean islands, the 90-something degree weather, trips to the spa, awesome workouts, the sumptuous feasts we were treated to each night, my brilliance on the shuffleboard court (skills honed during childhood summers in Door County, WI!), our $2,000 bingo jackpot (whoooo-hoooo!), or the warm milk and cookies delivered gratis to our cabin each night with just a call to room service, there are a few memories that I did want to share:

The RedPlanet Family Singers: Having never tried karaoke before, we attended a "family karaoke night" on the ship one night and gave it a whirl. Unfortunately, we selected "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious", foolishly forgetting that not only does the song increase in speed to its final frenetic pace, but that the words are actually sung backwards at one point. Disaster ensued.

Least Disney Moment: One night my father-in-law was trying to secure chairs on the top deck of the cruiseship only to find them being hogged up by various people. Approaching a man who was hoarding a large number of unoccupied chairs, my father-in-law inquired what the man needed all of the chairs for. The man began to explain and then said "I don't know why I am telling you all of that, this is Disney, we do whatever the hell we want." To which my father-in-law replied "OK then, I want your chairs" and proceeded to start taking them before my mother-in-law intervened to stave off a fistfight. Go Bob!

Most Disney Moment: While Disney employees are almost all outstanding, I was particularly impressed when one day while at sea I stopped by the sports bar hoping to watch the Bears game via satellite. As luck would have it, the ship sailed into an area with no satellite signal for the duration of the afternoon. I expressed my disappointment to one of the bar employees. Later that night, I returned to my room to find that she had slid a printout under my door that had not only the score, but all the statistics of the game. Awesome!

Regrets: The Animal Kingdom Lodge offers stunning views of free-ranging African wildlife on a savanna, some wandering as close as 25-feet from your balcony. What you saw at any given time depended on what particular animals had wandered within viewing distance of your balcony. As cool as this was, I quickly become a bit jaded and when Deanna suggested on the third morning that we sit on the balcony and watch for a bit while the kids were still asleep, I replied "why bother, there's nothing out there right now but giraffe and zebra." As I sit in my cold basement a month later, rain spitting against the window for the 7th day in a row, I am wishing I had bothered!

My most enduring memories of the cruiseship, however, will be of the bathrooms. While I bragged back in May about having changed my last diaper, I did not realize that leaving diaper changing behind would result in my hearing innumerable shouts of "Daddy, will you wipe my butt???" The twins are hyper-conscious of their need to use the bathroom, and, like a pair of 22-year old girls out at a club, one cannot possibly go to the bathroom without the other. One dinner on the ship we took both of them three times! As we were rarely in our cabin during the cruise, we were most often patronizing public bathrooms around the ship. While almost every public bathroom in the universe features urinals of varying heights, astonishingly, considering how utterly predictable it is that there would actually be children aboard a Disney cruise, every damn urinal on the ship was designed for use by men 6 feet and over, leaving the stalls as our only option. Since space is tight on a ship, there was almost always only one stall in each public bathroom, and it would, of course, usually be occupied. Hayden's modus operandi upon entering the men's room in this situation was to get down low to get a good look under the stall door and announce to all in a loud voice that "there's a man in there!". He would then alternate between repeating that phrase every 30 seconds, in case it didn't sink in the first five times, and loud speculation as to when the man would be out so he could go. This proved quite effective actually, at causing people to practically flee the stalls to avoid further embarrassment. Then Cooper, Hayden and I would crowd ourselves into the stall for ten minutes of business, chit-chat and butt-wiping (often while a line formed outside), followed by handwashing and, the most exciting time of all, use of the hand dryer (the twins love to talk about whether hand dryers are automatic or push button).

So, as I dry my chapped and cold hands this winter here in Chicago, I can always warm myself up with the memories of that bathroom on Deck 4, aft, on the starboard side. You know, the one with the manly industrial style toilets and sinks, the roomy single stall and only low urinal on the ship, and the nice automatic hand dryer. Ah, sweet vacation memories.