My partner HWD's younger daughter graduated from high school this spring. As a graduation present, his parents invited all of us to spend a week with them on Maui.
Regular readers might recall there was a bit of friction between older daughter and me at Christmas time. This would be the first time since then, to be spending time with both kids. Things started off rocky. Our flight out was 9 am and we planned to summon an Uber at 6:45. Younger daughter stayed at our place the night before. Older daughter was supposed to do that too, but according to HWD "she's hanging out with friends and might get in late". I turned out lights at midnight - she wasn't home, but I figured that's not "late" for a 20 year old. Woke up at 3 am - still not there. Sleepily mentioned it to HWD when he got up to go to the bathroom and he had no response.
We woke up around 5:30 am and she was still not on the premises. HWD and younger daughter both tried calling and texting her, finally she was roused where ever she had crashed for the night, and said she was on her way to our house. She arrived and it turned out she hadn't really packed, although obviously she had all of her stuff with her. Naturally HWD and I were pretty much ready to go. I waited impatiently and at 6:45 am I yelled up the stairs "let me know when you're ready, so I can get the Uber". A few minutes later they reported I could do that (although I should have been suspicious since they were not in the downstairs foyer with zipped up suitcases!).
Ubers come fast where I live. I was giving them the countdown - 4 minutes! 2 minutes! 1 minute! Uber is here! Of course they weren't ready. I try to be a good passenger so I was mortified to tell the driver that two of our party weren't ready. Finally after a few minutes they got downstairs and we got the vehicle loaded. It's a super short drive to the airport, so we were in NO danger of being late but I was irritated.
So that kind of encapsulizes the whole week. They are good kids, but boisterous and seem to have inherited their dad's "time blindness" (ADHD term that I recently learned). Having never had kids, I'm just not used to dealing with that and it stressed me out.
Grandparents have a timeshare with Westin. They put us up in a VERY nice 2 bedroom apartment with a spacious kitchen and living room and balcony. They were in a studio apartment in the next development over. We had a relaxing couple of days where we went swimming and snorkeling (there's a nice reef right in front of the Westin), and settled in. The resort offered yoga on the lawn in front of the beach three days of the week, which was great.
Here's the view from grandparents' balcony:
There were miscellaneous activities like the young ladies french braiding each other's hair.
Then, Monday night after going to bed, I got itchy. SO ITCHY. Knowing that I shouldn't scratch ,but having an uncontrollable urge to scratch. It started in the middle of my back, and over the course of the week migrated around to upper back, hips, edges of my stomach. I was sort of afraid I was exhibiting pre-shingles symptoms and kept reminding myself that I've been vaccinated and shingles is usually just on one side of the body.
Over the next few days, I tried calamine, benadryl ointment, hyrdocortisone ointment, and good old coconut oil. Nothing really worked, but I settled on the coconut oil providing at least a temporary soothing effect. I also made HWD take pictures of my back since I couldn't really see what was going on back there.
Answer, nothing much considering how utterly miserable I was.
On Wednesday the plan was to drive the road to Hana, which is a famous scenic route on Maui. Given that I was getting horrible sleep and felt miserable, I decided the night before not to go. Even though I had told myself it wasn't up to me to plan activities for the week, it bothered me that they were just going to half ass it and set out in the morning with no planning. I researched and found out reservations are required for the park that has a famous black sand beach. Naturally, there were no reservations remaining on the night before. I also found out that one of the main features is a longish hike at the end of the drive and it's advised to drive there without stopping so the hike can be done before it gets too hot, then do the other briefer stops on the trip home. We talked to the daughters about this and older daughter threw a complete hissy fit about not being able to go to the black sand beach. Younger daughter whined about the hike ("you KNOW I don't really like hiking" ) and older daughter was excited about it and determined to do the whole hike to see the big waterfall at the end.
All in all I was relieved I decided not to go 
I think they did have a nice time and as I said to HWD, "I think it would be good for you to have a day with them where you're not also worrying about keeping me happy".
Here's a photo of the big waterfall, courtesy of the internets:
Younger daughter did do the whole hike, and I think was thrilled to see the waterfall, so all good.
The grandparents are getting more frail just in the year and a half since we visited them at Thanksgiving. Grandpa has developed an essential tremor (not Parkinson's) and struggles a lot with his shaky hands and legs but is also too proud to accept help with anything. He and HWD did go for a swim on the first day and I think he enjoyed it a lot - probably too much, since they ended up way too far out and it took forever for him to swim back to shore (HWD says he did offer to tow him and was refused). So, it's good that we got to spend some time with them and we'll probably try to go again at Thanksgiving or Christmas.
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Ah yes, kids - best tolerated if you learned to love them when they were babies. 🤣
I thought we were headed into the kinky fun part of the story when I saw your back/upper butt, but alas no such tales to tell apparently. Did you ever figure it out?
I attempted the road to Hana, but ultimately deemed it a road too far.
I never did figure it out. My main theory is stress. Apparently stress is a common trigger for eczema. I need to find a way to manage those feelings if we are visiting again at the holidays!!
From what I read online, it sounds like the ideal scenario is getting a hotel room in Hana to remove the need to rush to drive it all in one day. I think HWD and girls basically only did the hike and couple of other stops, and they were gone over 12 hours.
I found the road to Hana to be painful to drive, too many people and not enough road. Glad I did it but would not do it again.
Interesting, HWD mentioned nothing about that and he was driving a big Ford Explorer (although he did scratch the rental car by getting too close to a stone wall in a parking lot - oopsie!).
@smartasswoman The lack of parking is the worst. I can understand how he scratched the car.
@Notaname99 perhaps the best way to do it would be to hire a local driver! Local tours of the road to Hana are really expensive though, $200-$400 per person. One reason that after a cursory review of "things to do on Maui" on TripAdvisor, I decided it wasn't going to be up to me to plan activities for the week.
@smartasswoman Lahaina was great, but we were there before the fire. I went scuba diving on molokini crater. That was fantastic. I would go back to the island of Hawaii but I would skip Oahu and Maui. I am glad I went to them but there are other things to do and see. I would want to go to some of the other islands instead of going back to Maui.
The resort looks beautiful. I hope your rash has gone.
On the very few occasions I've flown abroad with my stepson we often clashed. He's always late, rather than getting ready to pack he's often on the phone talking bob to his friends. I like to be ready well before time. It's got to the point where I go out of my way not to go out, including meals out, if he's involved.
Ha! I also experienced the talking on the phone when they were supposed to be getting ready. Their lack of timeliness did have an effect when going out to dinner because the resort had a shuttle bus that went to a couple of different areas with restaurants. "We're taking the 5:45 shuttle" translated to the grandparents taking the 5:45 and the rest of us ending up on the next one.
One of the pictures has disappeared so the captions are out of sync, sorry.
Teenagers can be troublesome. And sweet sometimes, LOL. Paradox
Hugs!!
A paradox indeed! They are sweet with the grandparents, at least.
It's been ages since I went to HI. I should really try to get back at some point. I can totally relate to the pre-Uber stress. I can't relax until I'm at the airport. Until then, I stress about the packing and leaving and traffic. Lol. As for just winging activities each day...can't do it. I like to plan...as in over-plan. Nice of you to be able to help a bit with the food costs.
I'm currently corresponding with someone that has no children, and he went to a July 4th event where there were likely too many youngins that were determined to interrupt adults willy nilly. It was a definite source of irritation. Poor guy.
It's nice to hear from another person who gets anxious about getting to the airport.
Hawaii was on my bucket list. Despite the fact that I didn't experience as much as I would have liked, I'm not in a hurry to go back. It's an eight hour flight (and a redeye on the way back) for a place that is over touristed and expensive. (I'm probably over reacting because of the super privileged folks staying at the Westin)
@smartasswoman I don't like to be late! Lol. I had a work acquaintance that used to offer to drive to the airport when we were going to the same place, and he said if he could manage it, he'd get to the airport 24 hours in advance. I think that qualifies him as being worse than either of us.
HI isn't that bad from the west coast, but I get the additional time if I ever decide to go to Europe again.
My first thought on the itchies was sand fleas but I don't see any bump bites in the picture.
It was nice of you to check the requirements on the hiking trip. I wouldn't have.
The more people that go on a trip, the less likely it will be perfect. Sounds like it was mostly good, though.
@superbjversion2 oooh sand fleas, interesting possibility. I was wracking my brain wondering if it might be something like the detergent used on the bed sheets.
I can’t complain too much because it was no doubt the cheapest trip to Hawaii I will ever have. I bought some groceries and managed to get grandparents to allow me to pay for dinner one night.
And a good time was had by ….
Most?
@smartasswoman just glad you are safely home. Looking forward to your next post
@Darby655 thanks, I’m glad to be safely home too! Alas, the same can’t be said for grandfather - apparently he tripped and went down on the jet bridge coming off the plane.