Confessions Of A Compulsive Travel Planner

I can’t help myself. Once my family decides where we will go on our next vacation, I begin to compulsively research every detail of our future destination. I quickly assemble an impressive body of information that includes every sightseeing tour available in the area, the reliability of the laundry service at the hotel where we plan to stay, and what we should expect to pay for local taxis. Within a matter of minutes, I can expertly discuss the pros and cons of the meal plans offered by each resort within a 10 mile radius of where we might stay.
Luckily, we like to escape our long Midwestern winters and visit warm places, so I can pack light clothing and reserve the rest of the suitcase for a library of guidebooks. But mere guidebooks are only the beginning of my mission. I also stuff a large plastic envelope full of brochures from my travel agent, any newspaper and magazine clippings I can find about wherever it is we are going and scraps of paper with notes and advice given by well-traveled friends. I then drag this envelope around for so much of our trip that it actually figures prominently in several of our vacation photos.
But still my work is not done. Because of the dozens of travel related websites available on the Internet, I can throw myself into a fact-finding frenzy that stops only when the computer finally crashes. It is those websites, though, which post travelers' opinions and reviews of almost any tourist destination in the world that are the drug of choice to a travel detail addict like me. From daily (okay, twice daily) readings of tripadvisor.com. mytravelguide.com and wheretostay.com, I am informed from past vacationers to our future getaway which local restaurants offer vegetarian menus and which do not. I find out what time to be out at the resort pool in the morning to get the best chaise lounges. I learn my way around places on which I haven't even yet laid eyes. “Take a sharp left at the stone carving of the dolphin,” I tell my husband who is looking for the car rental desk at the hotel on our first trip to Curacao. Someone had helpfully posted directions on fodors.com (or was it epinions.com?) for the car company’s less than centrally located counter off the lobby and I was only too thrilled to smugly recite them when the need arose.
I have to admit that not all of the advice I’ve taken from these message boards has worked out as well. A gentleman wrote a trip review of his visit to Grand Cayman Island and noted that the fish off the coral reef liked to eat CheezWhiz. I found this a bit odd, but I dutifully packed several cans of it in my suitcase and took it along. Perhaps the fish we came across while snorkeling were more health conscious than the ones he did, but the CheezWhiz did not seem to be greatly enjoyed by any of the marine creatures we encountered. I ended up bringing most of it back home with me, losing valuable suitcase space for souvenirs and getting strange looks from the custom officials looking through my bag, who were obviously wondering why anybody in their right mind needs to travel with that much CheezWhiz. Since no one in my family actually cares for CheezWhiz, it remains in the kitchen cupboard to this day. It is, my husband says, a junk food testimonial to his travel philosophy: “Just figure it out when you get there.”
Therefore, in a halfhearted attempt to allow myself just a hint of spontaneity on our next vacation, and in a sincere effort to educate my children in the process of travel planning, I made an announcement as we began to discuss where we wanted to go next. I was turning over the bulk of the Family Travel Research Project to our two daughters. Each would be expected to present a couple of relevant facts about the region we intended to visit, and suggest an activity that would deepen our knowledge and appreciation of the area. We decided on Mexico. The girls were given a week to compile their report. I held myself back with difficulty from immersing myself in all things Mexican and began to teach myself needlepoint instead.
The next week, the girls appeared at Sunday breakfast with fewer materials than I would have gotten from one half hour of surfing the Internet alone. I invited my younger daughter to begin her presentation.
“Cuba is a land frozen in time…” she began to read from a tattered folder.
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. “But isn’t that the report you did for geography class last year?”
“Well, it’s close to Mexico and a lot of the stuff is the same anyway,” she said indignantly.
I turned to my older daughter. “And what information have you found to share with us?” I asked.
“I thought we were doing this next Sunday,” she answered.
I’ve come to accept that this extensive preparation is part of the thrill of the entire travel experience for me. Plus, when I get home I immediately post all my advice online, telling everyone else where to stay, where to eat and where to shop before I have even finished unpacking.
To those of you who can merrily throw caution to the wind and travel without a carryon bag full of crumpled post-it notes about bike rentals and great places for authentic local crafts, I applaud your carefree style. Maybe one day I will join your spontaneous ranks and actually experience the thrill of discovery on a vacation. Until then, though, e-mail me if you want to find out the best shop for rum cakes on Grand Cayman before you even set foot on the island—or if you’d like to buy a few cans of well-traveled CheezWhiz.

If I don't post here for awhile, please call the Chicago police and have them check up on me to make sure that I am still alive. I say this because I think my husband may be trying to kill me. Apparently he has ruled out anything as obvious as slipping some rat poison in my Diet Coke or "accidentally" backing his car over me when we're cleaning out the garage--no, his method is far more subtle, one that will be difficult for even the most savvy of detectives to figure out.

To put it a very Sopraonos-like way, I think he's trying to whack me by suggesting that we get a 3rd dog.

That idea seems harmless enough until you know that we already have 2 Labrador Retrievers. Young Retrievers who have so much energy that our house actually shakes when they chase each other up and down the stairs on an average of 47 times a day. Big Labs who are tall enough to stand up on their hind legs and help themselves to whatever they like off the kitchen counter in the blink of an eye, including a bag of bubble gum mistakenly left there by my daughter. That caused me to leap out of bed at 3 in the morning, after I was awakened by the unmistakable sounds of a dog choking. I immediately rushed the Lab to the emergency vet clinic and only realized that I had been wearing 2 different shoes and had a lump of hardened toothpaste on my left cheek after I got back home with the now totally fine dog.

Ours are heavy Labrador who climb into our bed and insist on sleeping on top of me, so that I am practically pinned onto the mattress. (One time the black Lab slept so close to my head that when I opened my eyes in the morning, all I could see was black fur. For a second I thought I had gone blind during the night.) Labs who eat so much that I am constantly at our local pet store to buy giant bags of expensive dog food. I'm at the register so often that the chatty saleswoman just picks up the conversation where we left it off the last time I was there..."So anyway, Les, I told him my husband that he'd better take me on a vacation or else I'm going without him. And I tried that stuff you told me about for that rash on my arm and it didn't work. Okay, that'll be $98.46 and I'll see you soon."

It's not that I don't love our dogs--I do very much. But it is the same way you love a hyperactive toddler. As cute as that tot might be and no matter how much you enjoy being with him, you always breathe a sigh of relief when he goes down for a long nap. Now multiply that toddler by 2 and add on 130 pounds of energetic dogs both of who seem to have bypassed the sleep gene and you see why I'm an exhausted Dog Nanny. Neither dog seems to have the gene that allows them to be amused by any dog toy on the planet, because they immediately destroy any toy given to them. Chewbones that promise on the label to "give your dog hours of enjoyment!" are decimated by these 2 in a matter of minutes. The only thing that interests them is physical activity , so much so that I'm like the guy in the TV ad who kept saying "time to make the doughnuts", except that I keep muttering "time to walk the dogs."

In short, our dogs never stop moving, chewing, drooling, eating, jumping, or scrounging for inappropriate items to put in their mouths. And that means that I never stop moving as I take those inappropriate things out of their mouths, clean up the chewed remains of some vitally important item that I will now have to piece back together, figure out what it was and where to get another one, feeding them, pulling them down when they jump on couches, beds, and even the kitchen table. (Yes, the kitchen table. For one memorable period of time our yellow Lab would leap onto the table and take fruit out of the bowl and then leave it strewn around the house. Combine this with the fact that the same Lab liked to chew the heads of my daughters' old Barbie dolls and leave the them near the fruit and it looked like we were members of some weird cult, one that made its followers leave half chewed banana peels and mutilated Barbies in the corner of the living room in a bizarre worship ritual.)

I first caught on to my husband's murderous plot one afternoon when we were watching the dogs play with a ball in the backyard.

"You know what I think when I watch them having a good time like that?" my husband asked me.

"That you hope that they're wearing each other out and that they'll come inside and sleep for a few hours?" I said. "Or that they won't eat your cell phone again?"

"Nope," my husband shook his head. "Look how cute they are and Labs are so much fun to be around! Let's get another one to add to the mix. How much more work can it be when we already have these two?"

I was unable to form any coherent words at that point, which may be for the best. I'm going to act like I have no idea that my husband is trying to off me by getting another big dog, the very thing that will immediately sap any strength or mental stability I have left at this point. Let's fact it, I'll be a goner the first time I try to walk all 3 of them at the same time. So I'm just staying very alert and watching to make sure he doesn't try to sneak in the murder weapon--a bag of Puppy Chow.

During our long cold winter, many of my fellow Midwesterners dream of escaping to a sunny Caribbean beach. Me, I fantasize about garage sale season.
Forget about seeing a robin—I know spring has arrived when I spy that first GARAGE SALE sign along the road. I immediately burst into action, preparing strategies for the new season as I ponder which neighborhoods to target first and what route is the most efficient to hit as many sales as possible. (If I had studied biology in college even half as intently as I now pore over my garage sale itineraries, I’m confident that I’d be a noted brain surgeon today.)
During the season, I’m out early. I used to be honest with my family about where I was going, gaily announcing that I was “off to find some treasures!” But once the bounty I hauled home began to pack our closets, basement and garage, everybody began to discourage my missions. I then resorted to mumbling “I’m going to the market,” before I fled, but that was discovered to be a lie when I never returned home with any groceries. (You’re probably asking “why didn’t you stop at the store when you finished with the sales?” That couldn’t happen because my car became so loaded down with “treasures”, there was no room to put the grocery bags.)
Once at a sale, I move around the merchandise silent as a cheetah watching his prey before the attack. I may not look athletic, but you haven’t seen me sprint across the yard to grab that hand-painted tray I’ve noticed another shopper also eyeing. Suddenly I’m poetry in motion—and that poem is:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I saw that first
So hands off, you!

Being a garage sale addict isn’t always easy. There was the awkward moment last summer when my husband opened my glove compartment for a map and instead found a collection of vintage hatpins. Sometimes I stop to sift through stuff spread out on a driveway, only to be shooed away by the irate homeowner who’s just cleaning out his garage. And I haven’t fulfilled the dream of every sale junkie--- to appear on Antiques Roadshow and hear the awestruck appraiser say that the knick-knack I bought for two dollars is really worth a hundred thousand. Then my daydream turns into sort of a beauty pageant as the antiques expert puts a glittering crown on my head, singing,” There she is, Miss Garage Sales!”
Others welcome the end of winter when they see their first tulip. I’ll celebrate spring’s arrival only after I’ve bought a vase for fifty cents at my neighbor’s yard sale to stick that tulip in.