Vacation By The Numbers

Vacation Duration: 14 Days

Pounds Gained:

Tracye - 3.8 (incredible!)
Kenny - 8 (more than he thought possible with the amount of pooping he does)

Which leads right into:

Number of Poops During Vacation:
Now, before I get all into the details, let me frame this up as to why we would even know or track this information. Kenny swore that he on average poops 5 times a day while we're on a cruise ship. He was convinced this was going to keep him from gaining any weight during the 14 days of indulgent eating. I found this to be an incredibly hard to believe statistic, so I drew up a "log", if you will, and proceeded to track our daily expulsions. Yes, that's the analyst in me. So here we have it:

• Tracye - 17 1/2
• Kenny - 48

One for me was so ineffective on Day 3 that it doesn't even get to count as a whole poop. I also had one uncomfortable day on Day 11 where no poops occured. I made up for that on Day 14 with 3 of them.

Now, 48 for Kenny?? Is that even HEALTHY?? It was only 14 days! He peaked on Day 8, with 6. So while it wasn't the 5 he claimed, it did average out to a whopping 3.4 per day. I was on a more normal schedule of 1.4 per day.

If all that hasn't lost my reader by now, here are some other tidbits:

Number of most appetizers eaten at one meal: Tracye - 3 (salad, onion soup, shrimp cocktail)

Number of lobster tails eaten: Kenny & Tracye - 2 per person

Number of most desserts eaten at one meal: Kenny - 3! And this was after he proclaimed he wasn't even hungry before he sat down.

Price of 2 Snickers bars purchased at Miami Airport: $4.79

Number of Menstrual Cycles Tracye had during a 2-week "period": 2

Yes, I wonder what the fuck that was all about myself. Of course there's a story. See, a month before the cruise I calculated the timing of my "cycle" and I decided to try and circumvent the entire situation with a couple of packets of birth control pills. I started taking a fresh pack right after my period in September, and then the plan was I would skip the "off" week and just stay continuous with a new pack. It's been done, it's an old trick we girls play when we have to work around our "flows". Lucky us!

Anyway, after about 5 days of taking the pills, I sort of lost track and forgot. Well, by then I was all messed up and decided to let nature just take it's course. So. I got my period, as originally expected, a couple of days before vacation began. I thought to myself, "Great, this will be all wrapped up just a couple days into vacation." And it was, as predicted.

Imagine my surprise when I felt myself getting what appeared to be menstrual cramps a week later. I thought I was having cervical cancer pangs or something, it was the only thing that could explain how I was feeling. But then it all made sense when I got the Misery once again. I really couldn't believe it, I had messed up my hormones to such a degree it just didn't know WHAT to do with itself. So I had full menstrual cycles bookending my vacation. Good planning on my part.

Just when you thought all that kinda talk was over. Makes the pooping story seem a little more tolerable.

Number of tubes of toothpaste used during 14 days: 1 full-size tube

Number of Pepcid AC tablets consumed: 12

I had serious indigestion during most of the trip. I would have to start the day with some tums and end every night with some Pepcid. I was concerned as the warning label said not to use it more than a few days in a row, but those rich sauces on everything was killing me.

Number of times I went swimming on the ship: Zero. Just can't hang with all those people crowding and jumping around. I saved my swimming for the Islands.

Number of times I worked out in the gym: 1!!! Yes, I actually went to the gym one day! I did a quick 40 minutes on the elliptical, which was discouraging when it showed me the amount of calories I had worked off. Not even enough to cover one dessert.

We did, however, take the steps whenever we had less than four flights to go up or down. That was our big commitment to exercise.

Number of times I got up for Sunrise Yoga Stretch: Zero. Hahah, like that was EVEN a possibility! My German friend Ute did it, she worked out quite a bit actually. She said one morning she thinks the instructor fell asleep. He relaxed right into his stretch apparently. It just confirmed my belief that no one needs to be up at 7 a.m. on vacation. They need a 1 p.m. stretch class if I have any hope in hell of ever participating.

Number of guys Kenny admitted he would have sex with: 3

One guy was a latino heartthrob who was quite irresistable. He was a HUGE gambler, we watched him drop six thousand dollars in a matter of minutes at the card table. That's when Kenny started to swoon. I made up a profession for him, determined he must be a race car driver or something, because he was hard and fast and sleek looking. Kenny thought so, too.

The next guy was a dude who looked like Larry David. Kenny likes Seinfeld, and decided that looking like Larry David was enough to qualify you for some sex with him.

The third guy was this really good looking black guy who we met with his wife, they were at the card tables with us. He was FOXY, a tall dark drinka water. Kenny said he'd do him, too, throw him right into the Larry David/Racecar Driver mix of men on his list. Not that there's anything wrong with that.