A Modest Proposal

Our plans to visit Washington DC over Spring Break were cancelled due to disinterest.

Specifically, child disinterest.  Little Kid wanted to attend a week-long, competitive-enrollment art camp instead.  Of course, he failed to bring home the application packet, meaning he never actually applied - yet, somehow, it's our fault that he didn't get in.  Because that's how those things work.

Big Kid's verbatim response to the idea of a DC trip:  "Seriously?  You expect me to travel with you people?"

Well, not when you put it that way.

So we stopped planning for DC and started planning for summer travel instead - and then the first day of Spring Break dawned.

"Where are we going?"

SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE?  I can't even.

As it turns out, it's fortunate that we didn't go anywhere, because I am suffering from horrible sinus issues and am prone to awful coughing fits.  Yesterday it felt like my ears were going to burst, and I found myself thinking, "Good thing we didn't fly anywhere."

Then I immediately flashed back to last year, when we were preparing to leave for a SB trip to San Francisco, and my eardrums were also bulging, and I was hitting the sinus irrigation bottle hardcore and popping antihistamines right up until we left for the airport.  Huh.  Same issue.  Same time of year.

Coincidence?  I think not.

A modest proposal to North Texas schools:

QUIT SCHEDULING SPRING BREAK FOR EARLY MARCH. 

Allow me to plead my case:

1) Second week of March?  STILL MOUNTAIN CEDAR SEASON AND DEFINITELY OAK SEASON.  If Mom and Dad have seasonal allergies (which they probably do - I think they're included in the "welcome wagon" bag that your Realtor gives you get when you relocate here, and if you were born here, your allergies came factory-installed), you are asking them to travel (such travel potentially involving getting on an airplane that flies at high, ear-popping altitudes) at a time of year when they would rather curl up in a fetal position and pray to die. 

2)  If you decide to stay at home (perhaps because of #1 above), you may have the opportunity to do some fun stuff locally, or get some projects done around the house, but probably not, because MARCH WEATHER IN NORTH TEXAS IS CRAZY SCHIZOPHRENIC.  If it doesn't snow on you, it's going to rain a bit.  Or a lot.  This SB is a case in point.  Monday and Tuesday:  rain.  Friday:   morning drizzle.  That means that everybody who staycationed was forced to pack all of their activities into 2 1/2 days, and it was the same 2 1/2 days for everybody.  Long lines everywhere.  Ugh, ugh and triple ugh.

3)  Some of us have friends and family in Central Texas.  Central Texas schools almost always schedule Spring Break for later in the month, resulting in fun conversations like this one:

"We're heading to Fort Worth for Spring Break!  When can we see you guys?"

"Over the dinner hour.  If we go someplace quick.  The kids will probably have homework."

4)  If you're insistent on holding SB in March, the least you could do is make it coincide with the early rounds of March Madness.  Austin does.  (See #3 above.)  Fond memories of attending first-round games with Spouse at the Erwin Center in Austin and of Spouse convincing a member of the Wisconsin band to part with his cheese hat.  (It had the band member's name written in it in Sharpie, and it smelled a little.  It eventually got moldy, which I thought was really funny, on account of how it was a CHEESE HAT.)  My children most likely will not have this experience until they are grown, because North Texas forces them to go to school during the NCAA tournament.  THIS IS AMERICA, PEOPLE.

I get that it makes sense to stagger Spring Breaks a bit, so that only half of the country is trying to get into Disneyworld at the same time, but I kind of envy the folks in Northern California who get SB at the end of March and in the early days of April.  It just seems more humane.

Rant over.