Dear Snarky,
Can you help me stop what has become a family vacation issue every single summer. The problem is that for 5 years my family has been renting the same house on a beach in Florida. It sleeps 8 people and with grandparents, an aunt and my sister's family and mine we're now at 12 people.
We usually cram the kids on couches etc so that's not the problem. The problem is that for 5 years I've been bringing up the issue that the people who get the biggest bedroom with its own bathroom should pay more than the family members in bunk beds sharing a bathroom with at least 4 other people. But my sister is adamant that getting that bedroom is the luck of the draw because we literally draw a name to see who gets what bedroom.
Funny though how my sister always seems to "win" the big bedroom since she's the one doing the drawing. My husband says he's not going this year because he's tired of subsidizing my sister's family while he, at 6 '4, sleeps in a bunk bed.
I don't want to bail and have my kids miss out on playing with their cousins and seeing their grandparents so I'd love it if you would have a way to navigate this issue.
Signed, No more Bunk Beds
Dear No More,
This is a problem that's easy to solve with math. Take the amount of the vacation rental and divide it by the number of bedrooms. Then adjust that amount based on what bedroom a family is using. The family in the primary suite with its own bathroom should indeed pay more and the family stuck in the bunkbeds should pay less.
It's only fair and it alleviates a family feeling like they've gotten the shaft when they spend an entire week in the smallest room and having to share a bathroom. It also might make a vacation more affordable if a family says hey we'll take the smallest room because it's better for our budget.
If your family gives you an attitude about this then honestly, and I know this sounds dramatic, but I would make other vacation plans or get a hotel room near where your family is staying because I agree with your husband. It sucks to be stuck in the bunk beds while your sister has the primary suite and everyone is paying the same for the rental.
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If you looking for feisty and fun read about vacation with your family check out Trouble in Texas. It's a tall tale of what happens when a mother just can't stop meddling and enlists her 40 something daughter in her schemes. Click on this link to take a lookie loo.www.amazon.com/dp/B00S5DMG38
In this book, the second in the Snarky in the Suburbs series, Wynn Butler is ready to kill her mother...or at the very least demand she gets a psych evaluation and an MRI. On Wynn's yearly pilgrimage to Trask, Texas, to visit her parents, what she hoped would be a relaxing visit (not counting the family reunion which has all the charm of a zombie apocalypse) has turned into a Texas-sized, hot mess!
Her 69-year-old mother Gwynn Crockett Martin has become an entrepreneur and opened up a cupcake bakery that seems to be doing double duty as a halfway house for economically battered Junior League dropouts. If that's not enough to make Wynn want to turn tail and run home, her mom is hell-bent on convincing her to "heed the call of Jesus" and come to the aid of a woman that made Wynn miserable in high school - Sara Beth Bishop. And by aid, Wynn's mother means concoct a plan to exact epic revenge on Sara Beth's lying, cheating, spray-tanning, money-stealing ex-husband and his new wife, snob of the millennium, Yale Greenly.
Things go from bad to worse when Wynn finds herself embroiled in a scheme that involves breaking and entering, theft, assault, livestock wrangling, killer mold, impersonating a maid, hair spray bomb fabrication, and crashing the town's poshest society event of the year - the Mohair Palace Pageant.
If Wynn can survive this visit home without doing time in the ER, jail, or both, it will be a miracle! Hang on to your hat and saddle up for a retribution rodeo - or as Wynn's mom calls it - "justice served up Lone Star style".
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