Notes from vacation in Cancun

We leave for Cancun at 5 in the morning, I'm still half awake at the airport and fall asleep on the three hour plane ride with the baby squirming in my lap. We arrive in Cancun in the middle of a thunderstorm, which is due to tropical storm Alex happening somewhere to the east of us, I think. we check in and take a cab ride to our timeshare, my brothers and I immediately start drinking. My cousin and uncle and cousin's girlfriend arrive later that night. We drink some more at the hotel bar - I keep calling it a hotel but it's a timeshare, because it reminds me of a luxury hotel.

The second day it's still tropical storm weather, overcast but humid and hot as hell. I go running on the beach in 'aqua socks'. The sky looks bad ass. Hardly any people on the beach. Later we go out to eat at one of the many Mexican restaurants here. There are no small portions here, everythng is huge. The margaritas are as big as your head. It is like this for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I came here 10 pounds overweight because I've been lazy about dieting and working out lately. I feel fat and bloated all day long, and will probably leave here another 10 pounds heavier. I've had body image problems my entire life, this experience isn't helping. I can't believe I've been training for a marathon for a year and a half and I still feel fat in my swim suit. I go swimming in my sports watch and discover that it is water resistant and not 'water proof'. I've gone through 3 sports watches this year.

K. gets mad when I go out drinking with my brothers, I understand. It's hard to take care of the baby alone, especially since she's pregnant and it's really hot out. I come home late and crawl into bed reeking of alcohol and cigarettes. Baby gets us up at 4 in the morning, she jumps up and immeediately wants to play. I cam hear her tugging at me at the side of the bed saying 'Daddy, get up!'. K. usually get sup early with her and keeps her company on the deck while everybody else sleeps. Our balcony overlooks the pool and the ocean. On the third day, the sun comes out.

You can't buy gum in Cancun? Whats up with that. Also CNN World news sucks. Glen Beck sucks. We only brought a couple dvds with us - N. plays Alvin and the Chipmunks all morning (The Squesakquel, not the first one) - by the end of the week we all know the movie by heart. Since the weather is out we lounge by the pool. The pool is the greatest invention I've seen in a long while - imagine a huge bar in the middle of the pool - people sit in bar stools in the water and order drinks and food. Everything is charged to our card, at the end of the trip we'll get hit with a huge bill.

We've been watching movies on my laptop before we fall asleep, I've been dozing off with my contacts in. K. tells me that my eye will get infected. One day last week I wake up and my eye is in fact infected - it's puffed up and red and itchy, and there's pus coming out of it. I take my contacts out and haven't worn them in almost two weeks while my eye heals up. I'm on vacation anyway, not much need for me to do some close reading. As a consequence, I sit by the pool and admire the bikini bodies - since I'm basically blind, I have no way of knowing if I'm admiring a 25 year old woman or a 12 year old girl. I also can't see faces, so everyone is beautiful.

K. and I get a couples massage at the spa, it wasn't the best massage I've ever had but K. enjoyed it. I go running - walking sometimes - on the beach and curse my bloated body. There are plenty of hot women here. Maybe my body is fine and my body image is just so distorted that I'm blowing the situation way out of proportion - like when you see an anorexic girl and she's like, 'I'm so fat'. Tuesday nigth we take a cab out to the middle of downtown Cancun, to this restaurant where they have guys juggling fire and balancing like 5 margaritas on thei rheads. Nobody believes in air conditioning out here, I feel bloated and miserable a lot of the time. N. is having a great time, so is her grandma. That's fine I guess, how I'm feeling is not important.

I take a couple of hours out in the middle of the week and check my email and take care of something that broke at work. The internet is very spotty out here - I have to sit in a certain area of the main lobby in order to get even a decent signal. At the beginning of the week I think about my job a lot. By Friday I feel much more relaxed, I still think about my career but more in an abstract sense, making plans to take certification exams next month. I still feel basically hopeful about most things, including my career. Despite all my self doubts and all the mistakes I've made in the past, I feel confident in my abilities and in the future. My wife and family have changed me.

One night my brothers and cousins take a cab into the downtown area and go out to the local clubs. I want to go but K. is very sick so I stay in to keep her company. In the morning they show me cell phone videos they take while out at the clubs - picure after picture of half naked go go dancers on tables and stripper looking girls pouring drinks down my brother's throats. I'm filled with intense jealousy.

My brother and I remix each others songs in Ableton. My brother does mash ups of old 70s disco songs, they sound pretty good actually. I come up with parts of original songs. On Thurs., my wife and I take a tour of some Mayan ruins and I think about music the entire time. I spend a lot of my free time working in Ableton with my headphones on, my wife gets annoyed by this. Last night we went to this lobster restaurant, I had a ton of drinks and a vanilla mousse for dessert with strawberries. The restaurant has a deck overlooking a lagoon and we wave to alligators as they swim around us.

We woke up late today. We went swimming in the pool with N. all day. My baby is by far the most beautiful creature at the pool, on the beach, in this general vicinity. And I'm not just saying that because I'm totally biased. She charms people whereever she goes, everybody compliments us on our gorgeous little girl. It will probably always be like this for her. We watch Astroboy on DVD and I wonder why it's 2010 and we don't have fighting robots. Tomorrow we fly home and we go back to our regular lives. I kind of miss my neighborhood in Chicago, with its Midwestern trees and Midwestern parks filled with Chicago people, that's not so humid. Looking forward to getting back to work and back to training for the upcoming race. I guess that means it was a successful vacation.