Facing a Dilemma

It never fails, whenever you think you have finally figured out some of answers of life they go and change the questions sending you back to square one. When the year began we decided that we would plan one grand vacation for the family.

After holding a rather long and drawn out meeting where each of the kids brought forth their ideas for the perfect vacation we voted on where the destination would be. Despite my best arguments my idea of going to the Arizona Diamondbacks Fantasy Camp only received one vote. I still question whether or not there was voter tampering but I can’t prove it.

Instead my wife and kids voted to go to the “Happiest Place on Earth”. When they announced that I leapt with joy. Finally we would be spending an entire week at Chase Field watching the Arizona Diamondbacks! Uh, no; it would seem that I am the only person on this planet who thought Chase Field was the “Happiest Place on Earth”.

Instead they were referring to Disneyland, the All-American theme park where all of your dreams come true. Are we sure we’re not talking about Chase Field? My question was met with my family’s equivalent of the stink eye. Fine, majority rules so Disneyland it is.

The next question was one of scheduling. With five kids in various activities trying to find a full week where someone doesn’t have a conflict is the equivalent of finding free time for a G12 economic summit. It was finally decided that the best time to go would be in October during the kids’ fall break.

With this decision complete the only thing left to do was to begin making plans. By this time I kind of lost interest. I mean first they question my definition of “Happiest Place on Earth” and the vacation didn’t include baseball. I thought vacations were supposed to be fun.

For the next nine months my wife and kids have been busy preparing itineraries and making arrangements for lodging, food, and tickets. Every so often I would tune in long enough to hear how things were going but I admit I really wasn’t paying attention (unless my wife is reading this in which case I was glued to every word she was saying but I was silently pondering each syllable she was saying).

With the calendar ready to roll over from September to October the time for our vacation is quickly approaching. As the baseball regular season ended on Wednesday I was thrust back into the real world again and I can tell you that the real world is definitely not the “Happiest Place on Earth”. In fact I am not even sure it could be classified as the “Happiest Place in Hell”.

At dinner last night I was reminded that we were now nine days away from the beginning of our family vacation. Wait, what? Our family vacation is scheduled for the second week in October. No that can’t be right. Surely there has been some kind of Mayan Calendar translation error or something. I was assured that there was no mistake and my wife’s name is not Shirley.

Oh this is bad. The National League Divisional Series begins tomorrow and goes through October 7th. The National League Championship Series begins Sunday October 9th and goes through October 17th, which would encompass our vacation time.

The Diamondbacks are playing the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLDS. If they win and that possibility is fairly likely, they would play in the NLCS the week we are gone. I explained the situation as clearly as I could and yet my explanation was met with blank stares. I ended with the statement that if the D-backs won the series we would be going to the real “Happiest Place on Earth”, Chase Field.

Instead of them thanking me, they ran off crying. Hey, don’t blame me this is Kirk Gibson’s fault. I was expecting a third place finish with the Diamondbacks winning 82 games and becoming respectable setting up a playoff run in 2012. So while I’ll be rooting for the D-backs to take the series in four games I have a sneaking suspicion that my family may be secretly rooting for the Brewers.