Diecation

On Tuesday, Mrs. Apron and I are leaving Pennsylvania for Ireland. It's kind of like leaving Joan Plowright for Halle Berry. While I feel kind of badly for Pennsylvania, it's not like we're not coming back. Halle Berry's just a fling (that'll MAKE ME FEEL GOOD!) but we all know that my heart and soul belong to Dame Plowright.

In short, in spite of the fact that we're going to a historically-significant, lush, beautiful, cultured part of the word where it's approximately 60 degrees during the day: we'll be back.

In case you lack certain powers of observation, due to some cognitive disorder, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, or the fact that you're half Betta fish: I'm pretty excited about the fact that we're going on vacation. We haven't been overseas since our honeymoon to Bali, and that was.... wow.... four years ago. We've been to Maine twice since then, but this here trip coming up is the real deal. The dollar against the euro sucks lumpy walrus nippies, and I'm kind of disappointed by that. In Bali, we were able to live like early 19th century plantation owners-- staying in five-star hotels for approximately twenty-two American dollars a night. In Ireland, it's not going to be that way. Of course, I haven't lowered my standards any to accommodate for the poor exchange rate; we're just going to basically go broke.

But that's okay, because it's not like we're saving up for anything important and supremely expensive coming up on the horizon. You know, like twins.

But, really, we know that we need this. This last opportunity to see strange sights without little knuckleheads screaming in the not-so-distant background, to have quiet meals, to have casual, kind of loud sex in another time-zone, to viciously judge (and not be) the annoying couple with ferociously wailing children on the airplane.

We need this. We need Ireland. And we're taking it by its sweet, pale, freckled titties.

I just hope we don't die.

There's lots of ways to die on vacation.

Don't look at me like that. If you think about it, you'll agree with me, because it's true. I won't even go into the airplane ride, which I am dreading. I'm really trying to not talk about it too much, but, obviously, I'm failing at that. I know all 136 people just survived that Guyana plane crash, and that's great for them, but two people were just killed in the Wright brothers replica plane crash. And these things happen in threes.

N'yah mean?

Seriously, though, it would be so cliché if we died on this plane. The "Today Show" and everything would make a huge deal about it, because we'd be two of the annoying Americans who died, and, of course, they would elevate our otherwise relatively meaningless deaths beyond any and all reasonable proportion because we're pregnant-- WITH TWINS!

Oh, God, I can't stand thinking about Matt Lauer's carefully creased brow and Ann Curry's empathic hand-wringing on the desk next to her "Today Show" coffee mug. Of course, we'd get lots of media coverage because we're white, but we're not blonde and/or hot, so maybe the coverage wouldn't be as extensive as it otherwise would be. You know, if we were hot and/or blonde. But we're definitely white, and definitely pregnant (WITH TWINS!) so that would get us on at the 7 o'clock hour for sure for realsies.

Aside from the obvious possibility of perishing in an air disaster, there are tons of ways to die once in Ireland. While provisional violence has calmed down recently, there's always the chance that some IRA lunatic will blow up a department store or a café that we happen to be walking past. Our tour bus could hit a suicide sheep rigged with explosives. We could be mugged and killed so some red-headed thug can make away with the waterproof shoes I just bought at Salvation Army for $5.99 in preparation for our trip. An inebriated pub patron could fall into us, causing us all to tumble down like dominoes, causing fatal noggin injuries on the curb.

Sorry, "kerb".

Weirdos.

We could fall to our deaths at the Cliffs of Moher. It happens. Apparently, in 2007, two people died there, though the Garda Síochána ruled it a murder/suicide, probably to keep the tourism trade humming along.

All this is to say that my wife deserves a shitload of props, because traveling with a neurotic asshole can't be all that much fun. This is also to say that, of course, having sex with Halle Berry might be extraordinarily jubilant, but it's probably safer to ball Joan Plowright.

Travel Plans

My wife's funny.

We're trying to decide where to go on vacation this summer.

"We should go on one last big trip before we have a baby," she says. That sounds reasonable enough.

"Great," I reply. Where?"

"Oh, I don't know. Somewhere on a plane."

"Ah."

My wife loves to try and get me to do things I hate doing-- like recycling. And flying. She's not particularly dying to travel somewhere intercontinentally, but she wants to fly somewhere with me-- to get me out of my comfort zone. She feels this is good for me, the way that fathers feel that football is good for their pale, gawky, awkward sons. This sometimes covert, sometimes overt prodding is very similar to her insistence that I hold other peoples' children. I know part of the reason she wants me to do it is so that I get comfortable doing it, so that I'll hold our own child when we have one, and part of the reason she does it is so she can get that warm, gushy, schmoopy feeling a woman can only get when she sees her husband cradling a child, thus proving that he's not a total immature, knuckle-dragging, incompetent, retarded asshole. Every woman wants not to think that about her husband, and, even if it's true, no man really looks like that when he's holding a child, unless he's holding it upside-down, or over a balcony railing (no offense to the recently deceased).

We were originally planning on returning to Maine, like we had done last summer, only we would venture a little farther North than we did last year, to explore more of the state. I have recently been reading "Northwest Passage," an extremely poorly-written (lots of misuse of the contraction "it's" which is just unforgivable in a published work) biography of Stan Rogers, and then the idea hit me.

"Hey! Why don't we go to Maine for a little bit and then, you know, just keep going-- up to Halifax or Nova Scotia. We can go to a different country-- without flying!"

At first, my wife saw this for what it was: a totally transparent cop-out by an errant, insipid coward, but, the more I talked the idea up, the more it began to grow on her. Her parents had been up that way for a wedding recently and had nice things to say about the area. Bob, our friend who is building a master closet for us had been there with his wife and son and loved it.

"You know, instead of doing the drive, which friends of mine have done and they say it's lovely, but long, you can catch the auto ferry from Portland."

My wife's ears perked up at this. Here was an opportunity to go where I wanted to go, but to make me do another thing I don't like: travel by water.

Several years ago, we took the auto ferry from Plattsburgh, New York to Vermont and there are a couple pictures of me clutching onto the railing for dear life with a wince on my face that gives the impression some unseen bully had just smeared fresh blueberries all over my pants and called me a "faggot" but I was told I still had to smile for the picture. I think I ended up negotiating with my wife that, if I made it for the first half of the trip (probably around six minutes) that I could sit in the car for the remainder of the watery voyage.

I am very well aware that I am going to die one day, probably of a respiratory-related ailment, and though I'd like to put that off for as long as possible through constant calls to my doctor and a steady diet of maintenance inhalers, I am also pretty fanatical about avoiding dangerous situations that may hasten my demise. These situations include, but are in no way limited to:

Flying.

Taking the train.

Going out on a boat.

Flying.

Mowing the lawn.

Repairing the roof.

Walking during a thunderstorm.

Driving during a thunderstorm.

Flying during a thunderstorm.

Shoveling snow.

Getting into altercations or arguments with unknown entitites.

Parking near a BRINKS armored car.

Visiting an ATM after 7pm.

Eating the contents of any can with a visible dent.

Consuming food products past the expiration date.

Consuming medication past the expiration date.

Using public lavatories.

So I try to minimalize my chances of early demise by avoiding as many of those, and other, activities as I can, and yet, I still do lots of them-- though I'm pretty diligent about the dented can rule. You can easily spot me in the supermarket: I'm the guy obsessively fondling every goddamn can in the aisle like I'm a blind fetishist or something. But I'm really not at all crazy about flying, especially if there's no pressing reason to other than to get me to do it more (and of course, statistically, the more frequently you do it, the greater are your chances of dying while doing it-- so there) especially right before we're about to start trying to conceive. It'll make for an absolutely awful local news interview with my mom or sisters after we die over the Atlantic:

"And they were just about to start trying to have a baby.... *Boo hoo hoo!*"

Jesus-- fucking awful-- is that what I want the community to hear about me and my wife? During our honeymoon flight from Jakarta to Bali, the plane started going up and down like a fucking Yo-Yo, and that was all I could think about-- the inevitable, terrible interview sob-story that the vultures would just eat up:

"And *sniff sniff* they were on their honeymoon!"

Awful. Just fucking awful.

No thank you. I'll take that goddamn auto ferry, though. When's the last time one of those went down?

No, seriously-- will someone wikipedia that shit for me? I'm too scared to do it myself.