Last week our friends Lauren and Moe let us come with them to their parents' house in Anguilla. This is a special trip for us because it's not only a trip without kids, I can't imagine a trip that's more without kids. While we do see kids there occasionally, it's not a very kid-friendly place, and that's why we like it. The main things to do on the island (which is in the British West Indies) are sit on the beach quietly, drink, eat, and snorkel. There are no water slides or zip lines or kiddie pools or even kiddie menus, at least that I've seen. The house that we stay in is especially perilous for children with lots of hard floors and steps and automatic closing storm windows and pools and steep hills. It's the best. It was the reason I got up and exercised five days a week since January 1 (although one of the reasons I love Anguilla is that the beaches are so deserted it doesn't matter how you look--I just like feeling okay in my swimsuit), and it's probably the only reason why every few years I ever get caught up on my New Yorkers. In fact, there were two relatively negative incidents on the trip. One involved Young People deciding that what the peaceful quiet beach needed was a portable speaker blasting R. Kelly and Beyonce and the other was me temporarily misplacing two New Yorkers when I was so close to making my way through all of them. Crisis averted both times, when we found my New Yorkers and when the Young People took their selfie sticks and left.

I have an argument locked and loaded about why I think it's good for parents to get away without their kids but honestly the only people I know who would argue against this are imaginary internet people, the type who get into the argument about who are better/more loving parents (one I am always happy to let imaginary internet people win.) Why wouldn't you, if you could, leave your kids in their grandparents' loving hands for a week so you can run away and drink and beach and read and color and spend time with your friends and wake up and look at the ocean?

One time our friends chartered a boat and I snorkeled (wearing an overpriced rash guard that I bought that was totally worth it because it was cute and I didn't get sunburned) and saw a sea turtle and swam above him for awhile. We were each a few drinks in by the time it was noon and our captain busted out a bag of Munchies, which are Cheetos, Doritos, Sun-Chips and Pretzels all mixed up in a bag. I hesitated for a moment, feeling guilty about eating all this junk and drinking Carib beer before it technically wasn't morning anymore, but then I realized that if you are ever going to ingest all those things it's when you're on a boat with no kids and you just snorkeled and saw a sea turtle and your friend Moe jumped off a 20 foot cliff into the ocean and you and didn't get eaten by sharks (which is a thing I fear) and life is unequivocably good. There were moments on the trip that I felt guilty--not about leaving the kids but because it was such a decadent experience--but felt like that's a useless type of guilt. Take the Munchies and set sail.