Vacation Lowlights

How in the world could a trip to Hawaii have lowlights? Am I nuts? None of these ruined my trip, but they did put a damper on things.

The biggest annoyance was illness. I got so damn sick. The first day I was there I had a sore throat, by the next, it was a full blown cold. I hate that. In Hawaii you can still buy Sudaphed over the counter (can't in California, it is a prime ingredient for meth) and I lived on the stuff. Everytime I get on a plane, I get sick. Last time I went to Hawaii I was 6 months pregnant and I got sick. It worse plus I couldn't take anything. I wasn't as sick this time and I could load up on drugs. But if that wasn't enough, the monthly curse decided to make an early appearance...By two weeks. Of course I wasn't prepared plus it makes me bitchy.

Second was the rental car. We had a piece of crap Caravan. Not that the Caravan is particularly bad as minivans go, but this poor car had been beaten. But that wasn't the worse part. Ms. College-educated paralegal apparently cannot read a rental car contract. Last time I rented a car, the deal was you returned it with a full tank or they charged you. Apparently that isn't the way it is done at Dollar. I guess I pre-paid for a tank of gas without realizing it. Its worse because we were in a rush to get to the airport and we sat in line to fill up forever. When we dropped the car off the lady asked why we filled the tank. Needless to say, I felt like an idiot. Didn't help hubby has been rubbing it in. When I die, it will be the epitaph on my tombstone.

Did I mention the prices??? Okay, I live in California where things are expensive, so for me to be shocked by the prices, it tells you something. What I find most offensive is the wine prices in the restaurants. I know, I'm a Californian, I'm spoiled by wine prices. But if I went into the grocery store in Hawaii, the wine prices were slightly higher than home. Go into a restaurant and you'd be lucky to get a bottle of Ripple for less than $15. Wines I could easily get for $8 a bottle are $25 in the restaurant. Needless to say, I didn't buy any. The food in the restaurants are outrageous. The one really nice dinner we had came with a $300 price tag. This was for a family of 5, two of whom ordered something from the children's menu (which, by the way, didn't exist, it is just an offering the server tells you about). Groceries are high, significantly high. Yes, they are an island and it is harder to get stuff, but the mark up is still way too high. It costs as much for a pineapple there as it does here.

The last lowlight is one I'm dealing with now. Sunburn. I was the only one to get burned and I used SPF 60 while I was outside. But my back and shoulders fried. Yesterday in the shower the skin started sloughing off. Yuck. For several days it hurt to wear anything on my shoulders. I'm fine now. The kids ended up with awesome tans although they were greased up pretty good.

One more thing, I got homesick, can you believe that? After 5 days I was ready to come home. I missed chores. When I got home, I dove into housecleaning like a starving man after food. I think I need my head examined.

You know, Blogger is really ticking me off. It isn't posting photos at all. Tells me it did, but as you can see, there aren't any pictures. Grouse, grouse, grouse.