Monday

Monday's have a bad rap. Ok, so it usually means the start of 5 days of work, but if you're in the right job, that shouldn't be a bad thing.

So today is Monday. For me, it's a good thing. The more time I'm at work, the less time at home. The busier I am, the less time I have to figure out what to do with my personal life. The more distractions I have, right now, the better.

I'm headed out for vacation in 2 1/2 weeks. Vacations have a completely different meaning than they used to. A vacation was time spent with friends, plenty of adult beverages, perhaps a trip to somewhere warm, usually one involving sand. My last three vacations have all been to Maine. No doubt a lovely place to visit. However, the problem I'm faced with is that I need a vacation from MY LIFE, not from work. And life comes with me on these trips.

We'll be taking the red eye out. Yikes - a red eye with two small children? Yep. My parents were nice enough to spring for the tickets, which is much appreciated. Unfortunately, they went for accommodating T's schedule - and he asked for "the latest flight possible" on that day, so that he can sleep during the day. Well, that's great for him, but there's one problem - I can't sleep on a plane without chemical assistance. I could easily enough take a sleeping pill, but I'm concerned about being able to watch my children while medicated. Wait, what am I thinking? Of course T will take responsibility, right? He'll have been given the opportunity to take a nap during the day, so HE'LL watch the kids. See what I mean about life coming with me on vacation?

Once we get there, we're staying at my parent's summer house. My sister and her family live there, too. So these vacations are about letting the cousins play together - in new and different ways. Again, I'm not complaining about that - I never had cousins (both my parents were only children) and I'm glad my children have cousins that they enjoy so much. However, arranging play dates, cooking meals, cleaning the house is not what I'd consider a vacation!

One of the things that I am really looking forward to, however, is the opportunity to see my college roommate again. We lost face to face contact years (never mind how many) ago, and have had only sporadic e-mail contact ever since. However, she lives in Maine, and is only about an hour and a half from where we'll be - so we will get to see each other once more. The kids will be there, so that will limit the adult beverages to coffee - we'll have to not eat - to reenact our time as roommates. (Who had time or money to eat - we needed to save our money for the important things - clothes and alcohol!)

So perhaps, for those few hours - I can have a true vacation - forget about life as I know and instead, relive it when it was so much easier.