I’ll get into the thing most of my readers prefer to hear about before I detail more of my adventures on vacation. We have continued to make attempts to interact with our kids via facetime while on vacation and they have continued to rebuff us in those attempts. They are grumpy and surly every time we touch base with them, which is quite alarming considering they are a long ways off from being teenagers. I signed them up for tennis lessons and those take place on Wednesdays. When signing them up for the class they were in, it was suppose to be for 7 and 8 year old children. However, due to an apparent lack of interest Aiden and Parker’s other two classmates likely still wear pull ups at night. Sadly, their skill level is on par with Aiden and Parker despite the fact they still piss themselves while sleeping. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, Aiden and Parker resemble the kid everyone grew up with who was held back three times and had armpit hair in elementary school when put up against their two classmates, and it’s funny to see them in the same tennis class running drills with these two kids who probably still have nap time at school and aren’t allowed to use scissors. This is problematic due to the fact that my kids are master manipulators and they will come up with any reason they can not to do something. Their stated reason for not going to tennis lessons (the real reason is it forces them to take an hour away from their devices) is that they aren’t babies and they should’t be forced to be in a class with these small children. That argument would work if they didn’t suck at tennis, if I put them in the next level up they would look like special olympians and completely disrupt the class. The good news is Al and Sue stayed the course and took them to their tennis lesson yesterday afternoon, we told them to that they had to make sure the kids went to tennis but I’m almost certain I would have caved and let them skip.

This vacation I am doing some things that I haven’t done in a while, and one of those things is reading a book, not remarkable by any means but for the fact the app on my phone must have some preset goal for reading and it congratulates me after I get through four pages by telling me the following “congratulations you’ve reached your reading goal!” Really, all I need to do is read for two minutes? That would be like lasting 3 seconds during business time and getting an atta boy from Shirely (although she may prefer that duration of time). While my phone has set a very achievable goal when it comes to reading, my Apple watch also sets goals for me to achieve during the day, week, and month. Standing, moving, and exercising are the three things that I can accomplish to achieve affirmation from my watch. Earlier on vacation my watch told me I needed to burn 200 calories to hit my move goal and that I could still do it, I told Shirley I might have to wear my watch to “bed” if I were going to hit my move goal, and I would likely have to be a bit more active than normal. While it may seem weird to wear your watch during coitus, there are plenty of guys who wear them on the basketball court to track what they do out on the hardwood. This seems odd to me, I would think wearing a watch would be a nuisance while increasing the chance of injuring a fellow player, or worse, your watch.

I love my Apple watch and dropped it on the bathroom floor causing the face to take a direct hit and crack the glass face. Initially when I received my first watch I didn’t think there was anyway I would love it as much as I did and the thought of purchasing a replacement within months of my first would have been inconceivable to me. While my watch does achieve a lot of what I look for from a “Smart” watch it can be somewhat annoying when it tells me I need to breathe or reminds me to do other trivial tasks like stand up. That being said, imagine a smart watch that keeps track of the truly important things, such as how many times you have had sex, or for women how many times you have avoided having sex? My watch keeps track of how many times I exercise in a month and stacks it up against past months while also giving me goals for the current month. I don’t wear my watch during hoops so my watch has no idea how truly awesome at fitness I am, but I still stay on track to hit most of my exercise goals. But if a watch was there to tell you “Three more runs at your wife and you will have hit your February sex goal!” or “Turn your husband down 2 more times and it will not only destroy his already fragile ego but also break your all time record for consecutive days without sex, way to go!” A second thing the designers of the Apple watch missed out on tracking was bowel movements. Who wouldn’t want empirical data about their morning shit? You burned 97 active calories and 126 overall calories dropping that load!” or “Three more dumps and you will break your previous record set in January of 2019, keep it moving!” I feel like I would burn a lot of active and total calories due to the fact that I have frequently had our automated lights turn off mid crap at my office restroom, which leaves you feeling quite vulnerable.

Probably should wrap this up, Shirley and I have been having an enjoyable time in St. Thomas primarily because we have been doing a lot of nothing. My routine is to get up and get coffee, make breakfast, get shot down by Shirley, goof around on my computer, go for a run and then hang out by the pool. Shirley’s routine is to make earrings all day on the beach. Initially I thought this trip was going to drag but here I am saying “It’s already Thursday! WTF!” Which is good because saying it’s only Thursday would have meant something went way wrong. On Tuesday we went on our one adventure over to St. John’s Island. It wasn’t too terribly eventful other than no one wanted to sit next to me on the taxi ride we took in a converted Dodge pick up truck with three rows because I have officially become the creepy old guy. I knew it was just a matter of time, but I thought it wouldn’t become official until I hit my fifties (which isn’t far off). Shirley and I ended up at Trunk beach which is a national park and they had chair rentals there. We rented a couple of chairs and were ready to be on our way to the beach only to encounter people who thought the chairs were free and started walking away with them. The chair rental people were distracted and didn’t notice but there was no way I was going to let these people walk away with free chairs after having properly rented mine. I immediately told them the chairs weren’t free, somewhat chastising them for their foolishness. Upon reaching the beech Shirley put on the snorkel gear and left me to watch our belongings. Being the creepy guy I have always known I am but was cemented today by the taxi ride I decided to scour the beach for hotties. As I got my creep on a girl did a cartwheel causing me to wonder if Shirley could accomplish such a feat. I have known Shirley since 2006 but had no idea if she could pull off a cartwheel. My suspicions were that she couldn’t and when she returned I asked her, leading her to ask me the same question. In my mind this was a question that need not be asked, I take stairs one at a time due to the severe aging my joints have taken from too much running and too much basketball and I can barely pull off a jumping jack. I was spot on in my evaluation of Shirley’s gymnastic capabilities, wonder what else I am going to discover about my bride of almost a dozen years in the next few days.

When I planned the Jansma annual winter break vacation in December it was with the idea that the entire family would be going to the US Virgin Islands. However, that was when we thought Shirley’s parents (Al and Sue, those are their real names) were stuck in Arizona at their winter home. Fortunately, they were able to get scheduled for vaccines in Newaygo County, return to Michigan in January, and are currently minding our kids as Shirley and I take a much needed vacation. Not much planning went into this trip, I booked airfare and a place to stay. So, when we arrived and we realized there were no rental cars at the airport I began to panic. I am claustrophobic in all areas of my life, it goes beyond small spaces, it can be my home, or even a resort in a tropical paradise. Even on vacation I have to get out and go to the store on a daily basis as well as make a morning Starbucks run. Sadly, I don’t think there is a Starbucks here so I have had to settle for imitation cold brew from the breakfast place at our resort, and when I say resort, I mean that in possibly the loosest way you can use the word resort.

When we arrived last Thursday I received a call on our way to the place that I thought we had booked telling me we had been upgraded. I couldn’t understand much of what the guy was saying, just congratulations and upgrade. Hard to get excited when you have no idea what the place you originally intended on staying at was like nor any clue what the new place holds in store for you. The shuttle driver dropped us off at the original place we booked because I figured they just changed our room to a better room. Turns out they changed our entire location and we were now staying on the beach roughly 300 yards from the original booking site. The office was a converted guest room that didn’t exactly instill confidence in our new digs and when I couldn’t get the door to our room to open I began to have serious reservations. Turns out because it had rained prior to our arrival the door had expanded and the door needed someone with a little more know how than what I possessed to get it open. After a day of traveling I needed a shower and discovered there was no hot water. Ultimately I endured two days of luke warm showers before we spoke to someone who fixed the issue only to have the hot water go out again 24 hours later. The sketchy place we were staying at recommended a rental place a couple miles down the road and I blame myself for what ensued. Why wouldn’t a sketchy vacation rental place not be in bed with a car rental place at least as shitty as they were, if not more? I left them my number when they told me they didn’t have any cars, George called me back on Saturday informing me that a car had been returned and wanted to know when he could come and pick me up. In my excitement I didn’t ask anything about the car or the price and told him I”d be ready in ten minutes.

To say the car was a giant pile of shit would be an insult to giant piles of shit. It was a Ford Focus that was probably an early 2000’s model. Stupidly, I got in the car and he drove me to the rental headquarters which was a trailer a couple miles away from the resort that would not be suitable to inhabit even in Allegan or Ionia County. For some reason I didn’t balk at the rental fee of $65 a day nor did I protest the $4 government tax, that actually seemed like a bargain. Furthermore, I opted for the $15 a day insurance coverage even though the car had no actual value based upon its current condition. I never opt for the insurance, but they drive on the left side of the road here and George claimed a lot of insurance companies from the states use that fact as a way to dispute any claims made by their policy holders when they are down here on vacation. I drove away and immediately had buyers remorse. The interior door handle was missing a piece and was rubbing up against my leg and causing me a moderate amount of discomfort, way more discomfort than you should receive for $84 a day (I also had to throw down a $500 deposit, which was about 500 times the value of the car).

To be honest, I was in a bit more vulnerable state on Saturday than normal, the night before I was over served to the point that my alter ego Steve only had a five minute window to enjoy my drunken state before I went into full on black out mode. Shirley and I had decided on getting pizza and by the time we began to eat I took on the persona of wet noodle mumbling a lot of non sense and claiming that I had the investing savvy to allow us to retire immediately. I had just opened up a TD Ameritrade account in October to jump on some Hertz and now was off and running with a lot of hits, and a few misses, so it wasn’t all drunk talk, I”d easily be able to navigate us into retiring by our late 70’s with my investing prowess as long as I could disable Shirley’s amazon prime account. On our way out of Red Hook prior to getting a taxi back to our resort which was less than a half a mile from our resort, we stopped and made a reservation for dinner the following night. It went against every fiber of my Dutch being to not walk into and out of town but helicopter rides are safer than pedestrian walking on the streets of St. Thomas.

Saturday morning Shirley gave me a hard time about how inebriated I had become the night prior, the good news for her is I was in such a disabled state I didn’t even make a play for some business time, the bad news for me was that when I made a play for it Saturday morning I got the heisman, it was a stiff arm even more debilitating than anything Derrick Henry could dish out. I was also warned that I had to be on my best behavior if I was going to cash in later that night. (I didn’t even remember stopping to make the dinner reservations) The reservations we had made were for four people enhancing my chances of Steve staying away for the night. Shirley had met a couple from North Carolina on the beech on Friday and they had invited us to go to St. George Island with them on Saturday. Steve had agreed to this adventure but Jason wasn’t feeling it out of fear of being trapped for the day, and in true Jansma fashion Shirley agreed and texted our new found friends that we were out for the day trip but still on for dinner. We slowly made our way out of bed and headed to the breakfast place for the first time. Shirley asked the man behind the counter “how’s your sausage?” My response was “that’s kind of a personal question isn’t it?” The guy didn’t even smirk making me think he either didn’t hear me or he was a democrat.

I have made little mention of my kids and the reason for that is those little assholes don’t even miss us. The only time they reach out to us is when they want more screen time. We have face timed them a couple times and they have about as much interest in us as Shirley has in hanging out with Steve. To make matters worse for Al and Sue the kids have winter break and today was a snow day so the only respite they have this week is a half day of school tomorrow. On top of that, while I was typing this blog Aiden contacted Shirley because he couldn’t get on Roblox, he thought Shirley pulled the plug on him but it was corporate. Apparently you aren’t suppose to say inappropriate things on Roblox, even if you spell it wrong, and he called someone a bich in the chat and was red flagged for it. Kids is a chip off the ole block. Failing as a parent when your kids are there with you is one thing, but I never would have imagined we could do it when we were thousands of miles away from our kids. The right thing would be to keep him off Roblox for a month which I heard Shirley mention but didn’t really catch what she was saying until I heard her tell Aiden “ok, I’m going to get you back on Roblox but you can’t say any more inappropriate things because I assured them you wouldn’t and I don’t want you making me look bad the Roblox people (whoever that is).”