pay attention

Taman Ayun temple, Bali, 2015

I’ve mentioned before that we went to Bali in 2015. Let me tell you how that trip came about.

My husband pays attention to airfares and regularly gets interesting offers in his inbox. One day he called to let me know that he had found a great deal on airfare to Bali and asked what I thought about going there for our children’s spring break. I can’t remember where I was at that moment, possibly at work or maybe at the grocery store, but I do remember there was noise on my end.

Still, I immediately said yes to the trip and told him to go ahead and buy the tickets, which surprised him because rarely am I that spontaneous because I usually need some time to think and then overthink.

We ended the call, he booked the tickets, then forwarded the confirmation email to me. I noticed the email but didn’t read it immediately because I was busy.

That evening after dinner, we started talking about the trip. I was also going through some paperwork from our children’s school. I’m not great at multitasking, so honestly neither the paperwork nor my husband had my full attention. He mentioned flying into Denpasar, the capital, and then renting a house away from the city. I nodded and said that seemed like a good idea.

The next day I finally opened the email with our flight details so that I could add them to my calendar. We would be flying from Dulles to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Singapore, and then Singapore to Denpasar. And then in reverse to go back home.

Huh, I thought, that seems like a roundabout way to get there.

I opened Google Maps to look.

I looked back at the email with the details, then back at the map.

I stopped to mentally revisit the phone call from the day before and what I had heard my husband say.

Or *thought* I had heard him say.

I thought about how I was only paying half attention to our conversation the night before.

Um. Uh oh.

I thought I had heard him say we were going to Bora Bora.

He clearly had said Bali. Several times.

We were going to Bali, not Bora Bora.

Y’all, there’s a big difference between the two.

I had agreed to a major trip under false pretenses.

It took me a few days to wrap my head around my colossal misunderstanding. And it was a full month before I finally confessed to my husband. The look on his face when I finally told him was … interesting.

Obviously, we went to Bali.

And ever since, we have both made sure that we understand each other clearly when we discuss trip planning.