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Here Today…Gone To Maui
February 18, 2012 Travel with kids

In case you were wondering where I’ve been, I just got home from two weeks in the paradise that is Maui.  O-o-almost paradise!  We’re looking on heaven’s door.  Almost paradise!  How could we ask for more?

I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to meeeeee.

I may be a little delirious since I flew on the red-eye last night and I’m functioning on minimal sleep, people.  I’m also slightly delirious from swinging from a tropical climate to one in which my hands are already cracking, and from a lifestyle where I spent the majority of my day lounging in the sun, reading, swimming, and eating a lot to one where I discovered that I had forgotten to empty the milk before I left and came home to a festering, yet strangely empty refrigerator.  For two weeks I barely registered the day of the week and now I’m trying to come to terms with the upcoming book fair and soccer scheduling commitments.  What a buzzkill.  I’m wearing a bra for the first time in almost 16 days, for crying out loud, and I feel oddly bitter and constricted.

I feel as though I need to immediately clarify that last statement, lest you wonder who is this braless hippie who has taken over the Boyhouse?  Not to worry.  I was braless only because my upper body wardrobe was exclusively made up of bikinis and Lulu tanks, and not – absolutely not – because I decided to wander around letting it all hang out in a depressing, droopy, partially deflated water balloon kind of way.  No one needs to see that.

That settled, I love Maui.  My husband and I honeymooned – nearly ten years ago now – on the big island of Hawaii, and other than the awesome newlywedded bliss, the experience left me feeling kind of meh about Hawaiian islands. Mostly I felt uninterested except from a highly amused fashion perspective:

Do you need a closeup?
That one’s for you, Nan and Beck.  You’re welcome.
So my expectations for a Hawaiian vacation were not especially high.  HOW VERY WRONG I WAS.  From the moment I stepped off the plane, my skin plumping happily from the humidity and my purple Raynaud’s diseased hands looking and feeling like normal hands, the moment I smelled the tropical flowers blooming and felt the sun, I instantly wanted to vacation nowhere else, ever again.  Within a day, I immediately started petitioning my husband to book our vacation in Maui every year until the day I die.  I could see myself there, happily, forever, eating pineapple and doing yoga and drinking frosty beverages with little umbrellas in them. 
I was ready to trade in all my black sweaters and boots for (black) bikinis and sandals.  I even have, astonishingly enough, a suntan.  A SUNTAN, PEOPLE.  A SUNTAN.
Note: astonishing suntan may be relative.  After eleven days in the sun we went for a whale watching tour.  Prior to, I was in a long lineup for the ladies’ room, chatting with my line-mates about organizing a coup to take over the uncrowded mens’ room, when the very tanned woman behind me mentioned that perhaps I had not been in Maui very long.  After some discussion, it was discovered that we arrived on the very same day.  Well, said the very tanned woman, I have been at the beach every day.  Um, me too.  Not three hours later, we ran into my husband’s colleague and his wife, who touched my bare shoulder and asked, concerned, if I hadn’t had a chance to be out in the sun much.  I think I need to get a button that says “This IS my suntan.”
But anyway, my delirious, suntanned, bra-wearing, back-to-life-back-to-reality self now must go fold a mountain of laundry.  I have so much to tell you!  I want to know everything that happened while I was away.  Tell me everything. xoxo
"6" Comments
  1. The Tom Selleck photo is for me, too. Let’s be clear.

  2. I can totally relate to the tan comments. 14 days on a Panama Canal cruise and when I got back a coworker asked when I was going. Umm I just got back….
    Sounds amazing, I went when I was 12 with my family and haven’t been back but now I think it’s time I go and check it out again! Great post! (but could you really give up black boots?)

  3. i am SO jealous.

    but also SO happy for you.

  4. I mustache you a question…
    How glorious was it there?
    We went to Kauai…and Waikiki for a week.
    So so so so relaxing

  5. How fun!!! I’m glad you had a great time and got a suntan. Now, hopefully the tan sticks around for a bit.

  6. We are going to Maui for a week in early June and I cannot wait! Here in the Pacific NW our weather is still total crap at that point so sun will be direly needed.

    After 7 days in Maui I will, however, return nearly as pale as when I left because I don’t tan. My choices are burn until skin cancer is virtually guaranteed or apply sunscreen every ten seconds and remain pale. After doing the former for far too many of my teen years, I now opt for the latter.

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