Hair sanitation

We haven’t been away on vacation in about two and half years. Long, long ago. O.K, I know there are people in this world who never get to go on vacation.People who haven't even left their state, unless you count that time crossing the border to buy lottery tickets. And maybe I'm a selfish, selfish brat for whining about how I've endured thirty whole months without so much as a trip on a step. But I'm here to tell you now, I'm a whining, selfish, brat who gets to go, AGAIN, on vacation. So to y'all out there ready to get into it because how could I possible need a vacation - I who lives in Mexico with a pool and tropical fruit? I only say this, babysitting a teething baby isn't anything like raising a teething baby. Just like vacationing in Mexico isn't anything like living in Mexico.

Figuring out where to go wasn't even a question. It's only a three to four hour drive to Cancun. Five minutes online looking for last minute travel deals and WOWSERS Cancun is on sale! Not like I follow travel trends but I’m thinking:

August + Sluggish economy + Swine flu + Drug cartel headlines = Huge deals

And I’m really homesick and, from what I could recall, Mexican resorts are always packed with English speaking Americans. I'd been longing for an adult conversation; wherein I could formulate full sentences. I wanted to speak with adjectives, and predicates, in all their glory. Anyway, the short of it is that the Americans stayed home and grilled in their backyards. While they were running through their sprinklers, the Mexicans vacationed in their resorts.

So our American vacation, in Mexico, turned out to be a Mexican vacation, in Mexico. [Which sounds a lot like the time I ordered the mushroom pasta and complained it was too mushroomy.] The breakfast buffet consisted of re-fried beans, and tortilla chips, and everyone tried rubbing the girls' heads. Like people do - to other people - who's hair is the same color as their teeth.

And my god, can you imagine where the hands on some of these people have been? It's like when my girls were babies and their little hands were tight, fist fulls of drool. Total strangers would come up and jam their dirty other people fingers into my baby's wet vulnerable fists.

We're always being asked if their hair is real. There have even been moms who've had their children come and touch our girls' hair. Ben thinks it has something to do with a white cow or white buffalo? So I don't think this is stopping anytime soon. Also, I'm wondering if there’s a way to apply Purell onto their hair after it’s been felt-up?

Since being down here I've had to relinquish a lot of my germaphobe issues. I do a lot of deep breathing and crossing my eyes in order to blur out anything too visually intense, like when the vendors wave their dirty baseball caps over the fruit to keep away the flies.

I do a lot of this to: Children on floor, breath, that's fine.

And there they are again.

And again.

I was able to catch some American TV, which turns out I prefer over hotel sex probably because I haven't had TV for three plus months. Don't judge. You turn off your TV for three months and then let’s see how your sweetheart sizes up to an episode of Inside Edition.

Oprah ran on a loop. There was also a new show I hadn't seen before called "The Doctors." I’m pretty sure it's produced by the American Psychiatric Association since it's one segment, after another, addressing how to properly freak-out about anything outside the latex gloves you should be wearing at all times.

• Nail polish - poison
• Eating a piece of food from the floor - killer bacteria
• Touching a contaminated surface - doomed

And I'm pretty sure that all this head touching will lead to skin melting off the bone or, at least, an eye infection. Still, we can't become obsessive about this stuff the way we were with Lexi. Even though Ben and I are still like Lexi, Don't touch your face. What did I just say? STOP. God, stop touching your…! Geez, do you WANT to get sick?

But we're trying to get better. We don't want our girls burdened with our germaphobic issues. We want them to feel free to embrace any phobia of their choosing.