Back to Reality

Prologue:

My idea was to jot down events and such as triggers so that once I had the chance, I could pull them together into cohesive posts which captured our vacation. This is how I started:

Vacation is:

Road trip part 1:

(and here would go those pieces)

Ocean City, Part 1, Part 2

late night “watch just one more” on YouTube

swollen feet, with ice-cubes and arnica therapy

Star Wars, the real ones, made before the digital age

cousins n cousins

cousins tolerating cousins

cousins helping cousins

cousins ENJOYING their cousins

popcorn (but it's pretty much the all-popcorn all-the-time channel if I'm along)

sand

sweat

sunscreen

sunburn

people watching

sand

Thrasherfriesfunnelcakespopcornpepsicottoncandydeepfriedoreos (I kid you not on the oreos)

sharing drinks

realizing that we're getting old. They all look like kids

Did I mention sand?

Wedding

um, yeah, never put anything here

Briarpatch

memories

countless memories

same view, bigger trees

a new generation of crabbers

a new generation of crab pickers

teaching the next gen how to pick be the next generation of crab pickers

policing them while picking the crab so as not to waste a single morsel of Maryland Blue Crab goodness

eating crab, hour four

showering at night, not in the morning

kids old enough to shower themselves, thank God and at last!

though those kids still haven't quit mastered the arts of wet clothes rinsing and then hanging up those clothes AND the towel

sigh of contentment

this gentle breeze through this perfect view, I'm alone, and my man is busy catching me my dinner for a second night

looking forward to seeing a long lost friend (not so much lost-lost, just as in we lost touch through the marriage-family-kid thing, aided by the 1700 miles of separation, but through the magic of facebook, have “found” each other again)

And that's all the further I got. Silly me, once again I thought that while on vacation I'd be able to catch up on all things: reading, knitting, writing, journaling. Every year I forget that even though it's vacation, I'm still the mom who needs to cook, launder, referee and do dishes, all in unfamiliar environments, and also while trying to keep track of four people's possessions in 8 different overnight places. Kinda funny (but not!) that the most important thing lost was MY iPhone charger. Grrr. That's a whole post by itself, in that it illustrates not only what sleep deprivation can cause, but also the consequences of bad training, so that customer service employees understand neither customers nor service...another sigh.

We've been back three days now, and I'm still hopelessly behind in every aspect of life, motherhood, and all those assorted associated tasks. To top it all off, I have gone insane and not only created that challenge where I visit 1282 blogs over the summer, but also am participating in BuNoWriMo. Yup, gonna finally write that book. First draft. Just spit it out. That's what they said...and my competitive nature cannot back away from a challenge. Wish me luck and stop by to see my word count.  If I can get that gadget started...having issues.