When Wondersis and I were little kids, our parents took us on vacation to Lake Tahoe. This was notable because:

1) We were not a vacationing family.
2) We were not an outdoors family.
3) Lake Tahoe is outdoors.

The highlight of our vacation was a spur-of-the-moment rafting trip down the Truckee River, which we all believed would be a nice, leisurely float down a calm, bubbling stream. But our minds were changed 12 minutes into the leisure by a roaring rapid and a front row seat to watch another raft tip over and launch a family of five soaring into the river. I was certain we would die in that river, or at the very least smash our heads against the rocks and have to wear a hockey helmet and a bib for the rest of our pathetic lives.

Miracle of miracles, we made it all the way down the river intact and alive and relatively well. After we hit solid ground, kissed it, and swore we’d never again having anything to do with water, my mom said, “Kids, it’s time to go home.”

“Do you mean home to the hotel or home to home?” I asked.

“Home,” she said. “Home home.”

I whined. Wondersis whined. We didn’t want to go home. We hadn’t even snagged a souvenir yet!

“Kids! Zip it!” my mom said. “Your father’s not feeling well.”

I believed for 20 years that our family vacation to Tahoe ended early because my dad had the damn Hershey squirts. I never questioned it. But a few years ago when I told my folks I was going to have a vasectomy, my mom finally told me what “not feeling well” meant at the end of our trip. Turns out my dad had undergone a vasectomy only a week or so before we all piled into that raft on the Truckee River. The rocky rapids tore his shit open.

I chastised my mom for hiding the truth back then. “Ma!” I barked. “All you had to do was tell us that dad was bleeding from the hush puppies and we would have understood!”

“Danny,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You were eight! Besides, I was more worried about retrieving your father’s testicles from his hamstrings than I was about buying you a stupid Lake Tahoe ‘88 t-shirt.”

Why am I telling you about my dad’s balls? It’s merely an example I’ve summoned to show you that I have a lifetime of shitty luck when it comes to vacations. I could have told you how we almost died on our way home from our Honeymoon, or that our daughter crapped so much on our way home from Maui a couple of years ago that we are no longer permitted to fly a certain airline, or that I the only thing I would eat when we went to Spain was Burger King.

Therefore, it should have come as no surprise to me that for the first three days of my “vacation” last week, my son walked around the house with a bucket and a look of absolute certainty that it would soon be filled with the contents of his stomach. One of those days, Tuesday, was the day we were supposed to go to Disneyland with Dave and Heather and their kids. I sent Hot Wife and The Goose and volunteered (like an IDIOT!) to stay home and watch iCarly with my sick son.

(IDIOT!)

I have no choice but to believe the ruination of my blog vacation was the universe's way of telling me not to stop blogging. Ever. So I am grateful to the beautiful (except Mike) and talented writers who kept the lights on last week while I dry heaved in sympathy for my son, it's now time for you people to go. Leave me to my minions.

By the way, my son never did puke. And I'll never forgive him for that.

Comments

Boy, I'm bettin' there's nothin' like bleedin' junk to send a guy packin'. (There was a sale this week on apostrophe's)

Is there any family that doesn't have at least one good story about a vacation gone awry?

Whether it's the one where the kid vomits in the back of the station wagon across the Midwest...

... or the one where the kid slams his hand in the car door as they're setting off and they end up having to find an ER in the middle of South Carolina...

... or the time when Dad ends up in a strange ER at Colonial Williamsburg.

These are all part of family lore and it's part of what keeps us laughing during Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm sorry you missed Disney. That said, I would have been tap dancing on the table if I'd missed Disney. Just because it's The Mouse doesn't make it fun for parents.

If it's any consolation, I just threw up in my mouth a little after reading about your dad's junk hanging free after a rapids rafting experience.

Aw man, poor kid and poor you. It's almost worse to feel like you are gonna throw up for more than a day than actually getting to puke. It's usually my DH who gets sick just before a trip, but Number One Son did get to spend the 13-hour two-day drive from DadDad's house in the back seat with a fever. And he didn't understand why we did not allow him to spread whatever virus he was carrying with everyone in the hotel pool...

I'm with Jen on the Edge. I don't associate the word "vacation" with "Disneyland." Sure, the kids have fun, but it sorta makes me want to stab my eyes out. Next time, you go to Disneyland and Jen on the Edge and I can play with The Little Heaver.

I've just started reading this blog and was instantly drawn to it's humerous, no BS approach to the realities of being a father.

Next February my wife will be giving birth to our first child... God help me!

I just opted to have my boys detached from my noodle in hopes of not having another accident...
I'll have to remember not to go on a level five river after the seperation.

Hiya Danny! I "discovered" your blog while you were on vacation last week (b/c I'm a Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. P fangirl, and followed Crystal's blog to her guest post here).

You had some awesome guest bloggers, and I spent the whole week laughing (thank you very much!) while you, you poor soul, were stuck watching iCarly and dry heaving.

Anyway, just wanted to come out of lurkdom to say "hey" and let you know that I love, love, love your blog!

Aw, you could've just taken him. I'm sure there's little kid puke all over Disneyland.

I had one. But I didn't go rafting a week later. That part of the story confuses me to know end. I'm trying to figure out how to work into this comment how purple my ballsack was for 10 days. Shit was purple!

Oh that's awful--all of it! Nice that you let Hot Wife go with the Goose, though!

You skipped Disneyland?! I would have given your father's left nut to go to Disneyland.

A missed chance for your son to hurl on Mickey Mouse?
(Idiot!)

Danny, you have such a talent for taking horrible situations and making them funny as hell! I'm at work when I read your blogs and my boss is standing right in front of me and I just about spit my Diet Pepsi all over him when I read that part about your dad!! I was biting my lip so hard just to keep from laughing! You had some great bloggers step in while you were away, but I'm so glad that you're back!!

I spent my summer's in Tahoe and let me tell you, we know the Truckee ER like it's our own home. One year I broke my nose. One year my brother stabbed himself in the eye with a ski pole, and on and on it goes.
On another note, I too spent my week with a puking kid! yay for kids!

'bleeding from the hush puppies' hahahaha! I concur with everyone thus far ... you were greatly missed and I love this comeback post today.

oh...admit it...you *love* iCarly...

Wow, that story about your dad is horrifying.

I thought my Dad had a humiliating vasectomy story because instead of shaving "the area" as he was told, he misinterpreted the directions and shaved EVERYTHING! So not only did the doctor think my Dad was strange for wiping out his jungle mane of pubic hair, but then they couldn't find his testicle and he had to come back for a second appointment.

But that's still better than having your sack mangled in a post-vasectomy rafting trip from hell. Damn...

I don't think I've ever laughed so hard at a blog post in my life! Your mom's comment about trying to save your dad's nads is HILARIOUS.
Glad you made it back to the warmth and safety of your computer.

My grandfather died on the second day of the last vacation I took.

Way to steal his thunder, Badass Geek. ;).

As much as I enjoyed the guest posts, it's so good to have you back Danny.
I am with the universe on this. Don't stop blogging. EVER!

Oh man, thanks for making my balls hurt. No, seriously, thank you, I needed that.

Tell your dad, from me, that he's a pussy for not sucking it up and toughing it out, like a real man would.

And I hear you on the vomit-- I like things in black and white. Tom Petty is, as always, absolutely right: the waiting is definitely the hardest part.

I know you're joking, Dan, but we won't be calling anyone's dad a pussy on this site. M'kay?

Sorry to hear but also feel better knowing someone else is/was stuck at home with sick babe. Glad your back, thanks for turning me onto some other great writers. Oh, I worked with a guy in a prison and he had just had a vas, one of the inmates got violent and being the hero, he restrained him and ripped his sack in two. It was brutal.

Well geez, the least he could have done was puke. At least then you would have less reason to harbor resentment towards him for taking you away from Disneyland. Ungrateful little wretch isn't he?!

We're not traditionally a vacationing family either and I'm pretty sure there's an airline in New Zealand that would prefer we didn't fly with them anymore too...thanks to our daughters incredible ability to shit her pants 3 times in an hour.

What a timely post (since I'm currently on a roadtrip with the family). I tend to look back on the things that occur on vacations as memory bookmarks... they suck at the time, but looking back they seem pretty damn funny. I'm not sure I would recall the trip without something happening.

Of course.. I had my "snip" with the new "no scalpel" procedure (read as: bullshit - still knocked down for the count). I can't imagine going on a rafting trip one week post snip and having it tear open. Holy crap!

Enjoyed your quest bloggers - but it's great to see you back!

http://dadthedude.blogspot.com/

Oh dear. We've just had a similar post-vasectomy weekend. I've never seen such ENORMOUS testicles in all my days. Poor BRead Winner. Lucky Son and Heir told everyone at kinder that "we had to pick Daddy up from work because his testicles make him sick".

well, we all know that with kids it is a TRIP....no longer a vacation....

Vacations are only sans kids....

(and damn I gotta get my husband into the dr to get snipped...soon)

Ok, after hearing all this, hubby was right to refuse a vasectomy for so long!!! And I talked a lot of shit to him for not manning up and getting snipped. I kept telling him how much easier it would be for him because they would have to cut me open. I would have felt so bad if something had happened after I told him it was a cinch.

Day after I had my tubes tied I drove from SF to Vegas with a 3 and 4 year old to meet hubby. I even made a feeble attempt at dancing, but I'm pretty sure I just looked like a convulsing maniac in a low cut dress. And I did puke because it hurt so bad. But nothing split in two or came detatched from where it should have been, and I made quite a few points with hubby for having such a high pain tolerance. But I'm not going to tell him he was right, that'll be our secret.

See, after our horrible-terrible-miserable vacation last week, I've come to the conclusion that "vacations" are for young single people. Maybe even young married people. But definitely not single or married people with young kids. Of course, the rule doesn't apply if you just leave the little heathens at home because, honestly, usually we need a vacation from them.

www.notesfromthesleepdeprived.blogspot.com

Based on the hell that was my history of family vacations as a kid, I would have rather been the puke bucket for your son than ever take another car trek across India with my family. No matter what antics ensue on my family trips now, nothing could be worse than what I endured. I think this karma thing is actually true.

Thank you! I have been sitting here trying to keep myself from crying puddles onto my laptop because I only have one day left before my husband goes to Iraq. Your blog today had me laughing, literally, out loud....through my tears of course.

Alan sent me and he was right, you are a laugh. I feel your pain with the vacation thing and have one coming up next week. Ugh.....will I still call it "vacation" after.......?

Alan sent me and he was right, you are a laugh. I feel your pain with the vacation thing and have one coming up next week. Ugh.....will I still call it "vacation" after.......?

Fork! I commented twice.

I'm starting to think there's some Disney/Stomach Issue connection here. I just blogged about this myself, except ours is an 18-month-long-awaited 8-day Disney cruise that we're supposed to be on in less than three weeks, and we can't get to the bottom of our daughter's stomach issues. I am slowly (okay, fucking QUICLKLY) losing my mind.

I feel your pain! So sorry about Disneyland. (I *heart* that place.)

I feel very uncomfortable with your hockey helmet and bib comment.
VERY.

Did Black Hockey Jesus have to tell us he has a purple ball sack? Do I NEED that visual in my head? Especially after watching him on his trampoline flopping around?! Omigod ....

I just like the name "Black Hockey Jesus". It's a moniker that also totally lends itself to customization. "Purple Ballsack Jesus", for example. Shit was altered!

If it makes you feel any better, I don't think Disneyland is going anywhere. You'll probably get another shot... and now Hot Wife owes you one.

I'm glad you're back. My wife was right. (Please don't tell her I said that!) You are a good read.

Wanna be my pimp?

Great family trip story. Been there, done that when it came to family horror stories. Adventures in almost losing body parts, kids left behind, and of course the "I don't need a map" quote as we became hopelessly lost...

Disneyland just doesn't have the appeal when your living so close to it. I always send friends and relatives on there way to the Magic Kingdom with much luck and patience. You need it with the impossible lines.

Hope the vasectomy goes well. I've heard more horror stories from friends, yet mine, done 15 years ago was a breeze. In-patient, out of the office and into a bar with my then wife drinking margaritas and celebrating the end of baby-making.

Thanks again for the advise last week on starting my blog. Very encouraging and good advice, thanks.....

I'm sorry that your vacation wasn't exactly a vacation, but I'm delighted that you are back! I just found your blog a couple of days before your vacation and I was immediately hooked. I was devastated when I found out you'd not be entertaining me for several days. Luckily, I managed to survive. Don't leave again...EVER!

Sorry about your vacation...seems like the men in your family have historically taken one in the 'chin' for a good vacation.

Another reason Bossy is glad she's a Girl.

Glad you are back in action. Sorry about the ruined vacation though! Kids have a way of sending the best laid plans straight to the garbage, usually without meaning to.

welcome back! I needed that kind of laugh. Balls and vomit...another deadly comedy duo. :)

There's no vacation like a ruined vacation! Thanks for the reminder - I need to get back to Lake Tahoe....what a beautiful place. =)