Family holidays are supposed to be a huge source of stress, right? Please tell me they are. If that’s not the case, then I’m clearly doing something wrong, and I simply can’t afford for that to be the case. I mean, when you’re racking up hundreds of dollars a day on kid-friendly B&Bs, cafe meals and stops at every possible tourist trap (not to mention petrol and those danged Essence of Tasmania tickets), you want to be doing it right.
In light of this, I’m hoping that ‘doing it right’ simply means making it through the trip without (a) lasting consequences for one’s mental wellbeing, (b) kicking a small dent into the car door out of sheer frustration, or (c) losing one of the kiddos forever in an oversized tree cavity when they go in there to sulk and get swallowed by an undocumented fungus.
Okay, maybe I’m being a tad dramatic, but that’s only reasonable after the episode with the car yesterday. Turns out that arranging for car repairs around Brighton, Tasmania, is no walk in the old-growth forest, especially not on a sunday. After much pleading, we were finally able to find someone who could help us patch it up enough to get to our accommodation for the night, but it was pretty touch and go. As it turns out, we’re in need of an auto electrician. Near Brighton, this is even harder to come by than a mechanic, or so it seems to an outside eye. It’s hard to tell if you’re really getting the full picture sometimes, what with three wailing kiddos in tow.
See, if this hadn’t been a family trip – if we’d gone on a romantic getaway and left the kids with my parents, like I’d wanted to – this could have been quite a laugh, or at least an adventure. But when you’ve got kids whining in the back seat, demanding snacks and spontaneously bursting into tears, you need to be a bit more organised, and that rapidly zaps the fun out of unexpected hold-ups.