Last month my husband and I spent a week at Redfish Lodge in Idaho’s Sawtooth mountains, courtesy of the magazine for which I’m writing. It was a great group of four core magazine staffers (The Editor, The Photographer, The Writer [me] and The Right Hand [a.k.a. Office Manager]), along with assorted spouses. My chef- husband cooked for the group and I posted goofy blogs about our adventures–which led the two of us to wonder if there might be a market for this combination of services for vacationers? Give us a room in your cabin/condo/camp and we’ll provide meals and (for an extra fee) blog about your family. Just riffing on the idea, here are some of the “blog packages” we could offer:

• The “Standard Package” Blog: I actually write about what actually happens during your family’s vacation–bumps, bruises, farts and all.
• The “Remember Life Before Kids” Blog: This package includes a side-bar of all the “cute” things your kids will say on vacation–the running account of what’s in the garbage cans while you’re admiring cathedral spires; the geo-tagging of dog-poop-sightings; the tattle-stats; and of course the inevitable, inconvenient (and always urgent) “I need to pee… NOW!”
• The “I Love My Mother-In-Law” Blog: If MIL (or another inconvenient personage) is a member of the party, rack up some brownie-points with this extra-cost package in which lovely things will be said about her. By the end of the trip, you may need to cash in those points.

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  The “Armchair Adventurer” Blog: Here you are in the mountains, and you “should” at least be hiking in them, right? Or diving with the sharks, or climbing cliffs, or reeling in a big-game fish, or jumping out of airplanes (parachute optional if the Mother-in-Law is along)… If you’d rather just drink margaritas by the pool, this package will construct impressive adventures FOR you, and (for an extra charge) include a few photo-shopped pictures. Impress your friends without ever leaving the swim-up bar!

• The “Keeping Up with the Joneses” Blog: So you can’t afford the first-class upgrades and fancy accommodations–no worries! For a much lower cost, you can “upgrade” the DESCRIPTION of your vacation! No one has to know you had the room with the dumpster-view and the cigarette-burns on the bedspread…

For an even larger fee, I WON’T blog about your family’s vacation.  You can pay me now–I accept PayPal.

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[Disclaimer #1: My personal Mother-in-Law is one of the loveliest people I know. Not joking.]

[Disclaimer #2: It’s purely coincidence that my sister’s last name is “Jones”… Also not joking, Kadi. ;)]