Sunday, July 31, 2005

Vacation?!? What's That?

My first real vacation by myself, without my parents and brothers, was my honeymoon if you can believe it. From the time I was 16 y/o, I worked and didn't even go away on vacations with my family most times any more. I was 23 y/o when I married, and we went to Bermuda on a cruise with Norwegian Cruiselines. It was absolutely heavenly but not quite the relaxed vacation you'd think it would be, since it was really the first time Manny and I were alone for more than several hours at a time. Sure, we'd had a couple over-nights in the 2 months before our wedding, but this was different. We'd never lived together, and so our first living together was on our honeymoon.

Our next vacation was a year later, another cruise to Bermuda with Celebrity Cruiselines, and it was amazing. But it was also child free. After that, while I was working our vacations were always hit or miss on matching up together, and once we had kids we were limited to day trips. Since having our 2nd daughter, I've been a SAHM and we've only had a few days total that we can count as "vacation." Why? Because after Grace was born, within a couple of months, the Job Fairy took DH's jobs for the better part of 2 yrs. She didn't grace us with her good luck until 2 weeks before Anneliese was born.

Now ,Manny is having a real vacation this week starting tomorrow and I'm nervous. We had hoped to go away to New Hampshire to Storyland, but didn't start planning until a couple weeks ago. You need a good month to plan and book a decent condo. Oh well, we're planning day trips again, I guess. We have so much to do this week, things that can't be done when Manny is working, like having the cars checked and putting up the fence we just had delivered. We're hoping to spend a lot of time with our best friends, and getting to places that the kids will enjoy. I also have that PPD appointment with my new psychiatrist this week... the 1st appointment. Seems sort of ironic that it falls during the time I'm supposed to be on vacation.

Now, I say "vacation" as if I expect to have some down time or a break. I realize that's not going to happen until Anneliese is 18 y/o. I guess I just want a week where I don't have to worry about money being frivolous. I think I'm going to have some financial guilt over this but really, it's money we put aside and I count it as an investment in our mental health. It's hard to think of vacation time as being food for the soul rather than "just more money that could go towards bills."

Bills suck, man. Anyone care to go psychic on me and give the winning Power Ball numbers?

This may sound awful, but a real vacation would be this:

Someone agrees to take the kids... all three of my beautiful, silly, sweet, hands-full kids... so that Manny and I could go away alone. Where there are no phones. Some place with a beach. A vacation would mean I can lay in the sun, walk around some gardens, eat wherever I want, stay up late and sleep in too and not worry that the girls are being taken care of. Oh yeah, and getting some quality time with the spousal unit ;-) hee hee hee.

I know that in reality even if it DID happen that someone would take all three girls, I'd be a wreck without them because the only time I've spent away from any of them over-night has been when I've been in the hospital giving birth to another baby. I have some separation anxiety issues, no? LOL Yeah, I know I do. Which brings me to the point that I actually saw my stay in the hospital as a vacation, of sorts LOL. I did cry each night in the hospital when I thought about not being there to tuck them in and just "be" with them. Yes, I'm odd but I loved that time where I was pampered and important and not really on a clock. I also did relish that someone else was 100% responsible for my girls. I relished that I got to be selfish with my newest baby, and still have the luxury of calling a nurse to take her if I was too exhausted and needed some rest.

In reality, vacation means I hopefully will have some extra parental help from the spousal unit ;-) and in theory we get to spend more time together as a family. I really do wish we could have gone away for this vacation, but we just didn't plan it soon enough. We didn't even have this time off scheduled until a week and a half ago, so who can blame us? All I know is that I'm looking forward to it.

Vacation. Such a relative term, ya know?




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