So, last year we did something we like to call “Crispy Christmas”. We blew off Christmas entirely to fly to Maui and meet up with some friends from Yellowknife to spend a week on the beach. Far away from snow, family (despite much love for family), and friends, with their adorable pregnant bellies, babies, and toddlers running around having the times of their lives – this was heaven and JUST what the doctor ordered.
This is our Sand-Jabba. On Christmas day we tried to build a Christmas tree out of sand, but it just kept melting into a blob, so we decided to make a Sand-Jabba instead. We asked the folks next to us if we could borrow their Santa hat for a moment, and the first thing they said was “Tried to make a Xmas tree and ended up with a Sand-Jabba instead, didn’t ya? We did the same thing last year!” So we’re not as original as we had thought, but it still made us giggle. Sand-Jabba says “Merry Christmas! OH-OH-OH!” We had a simply wonderful week, and it really felt like the best idea we’d had in a long time. Hooray for Crispy Christmas, 2015-2016!
So this year, after our recent misadventures, and a generally crap-tastic 2016, we decided to do a “Crispy Christmas Part Deux”. Our Yellowknife buddies were on board, so we booked a week at a Cuban resort.
My brother, his wife, and my niece and nephew decided to come and visit for Christmas, which never happens. My mom was ecstatic. She was less thrilled when we announced that we weren’t planning to be here. In fact, less thrilled doesn’t even scratch the surface… Kyle’s folks were also less than happy with the fact that we wouldn’t be going to visit them for Christmas for the second year in a row. So! After much facting, figuring, credit card destroying, and negotiation, we decided to stay for Christmas with the family, (Kyle’s folks even came HERE for a few days!) and take off first thing on the 27th. “Crispy Christmas the sequel” became “Auld Lang Crispy”. This was going to be it. This was going to be the break that we needed, the attitude adjustment that would put us back into hopeful and joyous mindsets for the beginning of 2017.
…Or not.
Well, let’s just say that 2016 went out in the same manner as it had behaved all year. Our friends from Yellowknife got completely dicked around by Air Canada, and lost 2 days of their vacation, so there was that. Our resort SUCKED! Truly. Extremely rude and unhelpful staff, our room was equipped with brutal beds, a balcony railing that was rotted and fallen out of the wall, so unsafe to lean on. We also had mould on our ceiling, our lampshades and furniture seemed to have survived a fire, so I can only assume that at some point smoking was allowed in our room, and they never replaced the furnishings, so many years of nicotine and humidity caused them to drip gooey brown liquid all over the place. We had sharp, rusty patches on our bathtub, missing tiles, broken furniture, and the loudest hallway ever. Okay, that’s just the surroundings and the staff, and the entertainment – which consisted of tinfoil stars taped to the backdrop of the stage, and audience participation contests for the Macarena and staff singing karaoke. Every. Night.
Some of the dancing was cool, though, the booze flowed freely, the coffee bar was THE BEST THING EVER, and the beaches were absolutely beautiful. So who cares! Eventually our friends arrived and we settled in to squeeze every drop of fun out of this trip if it killed us.
Then, right on cue, Kyle got what was most likely E.Coli. Which makes sense, as we saw some super sketchy food handling going on, and literal flocks of birds hanging out on the buffets. On them. Like, directly on the food. What’s funny, but not really, is I had mostly veggies, salads, and lots of chicken and seafood, while Kyle stuck to potatoes, bread, pasta, and beef (despite it being Cuban beef, not the Albertan beef he grew up with) to AVOID GETTING SICK. So, we decided to book a day trip to Havana to get away from our “resort” and to see a really neat city and it’s culture.
Kyle had stayed up late with our newly/finally arrived friends having a few too many, and he was sick in the night. This is SUPER rare for him, and his lack of drunkenness and ability to avoid hangovers is superhuman. Still, we just figured he had had too much to drink and would feel better the next day. We woke up early, despite being up most of the night with Kyle being sick, got dressed, and headed to get in line for the breakfast buffet really quickly, before being picked up by our bus. Which would take hours. With winding roads. And very few bathroom stops or availability of actual bathrooms or toilet paper. While we were standing in line Kyle got a look on his face I had never seen. Pensive, yet worried. He suddenly blurted: “I think I have to go back to the room for a minute…. No wait… I’m fine…. No… no, I have to go.” and he quickly walked ALL the way back across the resort to our room. My friends and I got a table and some basic breakfast, and grabbed some buns and a banana for Kyle, as he still hadn’t shown up yet and we had to rush. Kyle made it in time. Wearing different pants. ‘Nuff said.
The rest of the day on the bus, wandering around Havana learning historical facts, trying local foods and customs with almost no bathrooms to speak of, was BRUTAL for him, to say the least. Our friend made merciless fun of him, as friends do, and he laughed it off as best he could, but the overlying feeling was “FUCK YOU, 2016! FUCK YOU.” He did enjoy thinking about our ornery maids having to empty the garbage with his ruined undies in it. Take THAT, crappy resort! Literally. Crappy. Okay, that was terrible, but it was right there and I had to say it.
My poor guy had the most horrid 4 days stuck in our gross room, while urging me to try to enjoy the trip and get our money’s worth on behalf of both of us. His stomach was so distended and agonizing that he looked about 7 months pregnant. He blew through all of the Immodium and Pepto we and our friends had brought, and (again, with the SUPER unhelpful resort staff) couldn’t seem to find help in our resort medical centre. Which was closed. All of the time. Despite having hours posted, and Kyle going 4 times within those set hours.
He gave himself a pep-talk into the mirror on New Year’s Eve. Stared himself down seriously and said “Kyle. You can do this. Don’t poop for one hour. Have a nice dinner with your wife and friends, kiss her, and come back to bed. This will not beat you.” It worked. He came out, plastered a smile on his face, picked at his dinner, watched some of the “show” (such as it was), kissed me Happy New Year, and went back to bed. He fought bravely. On the morning of New Year’s Day, he woke up feeling much better, and was able to have an actual meal and leave the resort. So! 2016 sucked right up until the last possible second, but 2017 literally had a whole different feeling! Bring on some better times!
We had a few more less-than-awesome experiences on our trip, but what I can say is that it fixed “us”. We were back in sync with each other, and looking forward with a new hope for the first time in ages. It truly felt like a massive weight was lifting off of our chests. We were still hurt, and terrified that we would suffer an adoption reversal again, but we decided to get back on the crazy train. We called the adoption agency in January to ask them to re-open our file for prospective mothers to choose from.
I had puked, Kyle had …”Cuba’d”. Cue Morgan Freeman a la Shawshank Redemption voice: We had crawled our way through the (literal) shit that was 2016, and come out clean on the other side to face 2017 with a new attitude. We had found our way back to each other, and back to hope.
Adventures With Infertility 