About a year and a half ago, I started hearing rumblings amongst friends and coworkers about a HOT new book, Fifty Shades of Grey. Now these ladies were nearly quivering with madness when they exclaimed to me, “You HAVE to read this book! You just have to!” That right there is the most antagonistic set of words ever set in front of me. I DO NOT LIKE TO BE TOLD what to do. And what’s more, I don’t tend to follow the crowd, what ever the trend, I tend to buck it…I don’t watch any Housewives of any county, I don’t find Zumba exhilarating, I never thought Tom Cruise was yummy (but Channing Tatum is a different story), I never grew carrots on FarmVille or crushed candy…you get the picture. So just on the fact that it was popular and all you saw on the beach all summer were women…

Around March or April, my husband and I begin to sweat and break out into hives. It is this time of year that we start to plan our annual family travel extravaganza. Like most other red blood American parents, the notion of a family summer vacation is ingrained in us. We feel it is our parental duty to provide our children with some sort of vacation during their vacation from school. We want them to have life experiences beyond their own backyard. Every year, we ponder destinations over brochures and the Internet, seeking our perfect family getaway. And every year, after we’ve spent countless hours analyzing our options and fighting over who wants to go where (some reasonable, some not so much…ahem…European cruise), a sense of dread immediately begins to consume me.
Vacations are hardly that for me. The anxiety sets in about a week before we are scheduled to…