Day 5 of vacation in Maine. It is a breezy 82 degrees and I am sitting on the porch with my ancient laptop.
Georgia is big enough now I can actually get alone time. She is in love with her older cousin who is 13 now and she demands to be carried by her all the time.
My last day of work (which I crammed in at the beginning of the week so I could get 12 days off) I was talking excitedly about my coming vacation and my friend reminded me of last year. Reminded me how I had just discovered the tapping and I had to use it alot to get through the 10 days with Georgia who was either an angel or a writhing kicking mass of brat. Uggh. I had forgotten. I had forgotten how difficult it was to get her to sleep in an unfamiliar place and how nasty and crazy she was, trying my patience in new ways. Well, my friend at work lovingly but firmly, reminded me and suggested strongly that I drop my expectations “Let them plummet! There may be no alone time and you may have to manage Georgia at her worst.”
So I did. I decided just before we left that the vacation was a selfless thing I was doing for my family that might bring me solitary pleasures but really also might not.
The packing was heinous. We had decided we wanted the house clean when we got home because it is usually such a let down to walk into our home after being in a breezy uncluttered creaky summer house. Our house feels dark and landlocked. Everything seems crowded and messy. This year we cleaned and tidied everything and tried to pack efficiently, all on the days I was working too many hours. I was a wreck the day before we left. Everyone else I know had complained as they packed for their trip and I had half-heard them. But then it was my turn and it was terrible. I think what pains me is realization that all of the wrapping up and organizing and prioritizing that I hoped to get done in the preceding year as well as the hoped-for increase in income and comfort has not occurred. When I am packing my laptop from 1992 Rob says, “Really, that thing still works?” and I want to cry because I bought it with the strong knowing that I would pay off the $1200 it cost me in just a short time with my lucrative writing career and that didn’t happen. So yes, I am bringing the aged laptop because there is no other way to write and I love to write, damnit! And I can’t afford another new laptop with skype and wifi because we are still barely paying off medical bills. Grump! Then I pack ten books to read and realize one is The Omnivores Dilemma which I started and half-completed last vacation and never picked up again.
So I guess that while I know I am blessed to be able to go on vacation and get off work for 10 days to be with my family, it highlights how little free time I have and how little I have put into the goals I had hoped to be fulfilled by this, next year’s holiday.
Anyway, enough griping. It has been lovely so far. Georgia is a year older and much calmer and now that her cousin is here she is elated with her company. Rob loves to play in the water with the kids so a couple times a day he asks if I want to hang back and have some alone time! Fantastic! Because I gave up my desire to fulfill all my alone-time dreams this week and instead focus on the family, I am glad to hang with them and not always trying to escape and do my own thing. I guess as the girls get older they need me around less and they are willing to let me go. Which I thought might break my heart, but no. It’s OK.
Back to griping. I went to do my dicey banking at the beautiful moneyed Camden public library at their free computers like I always do because checks are being deposited and I have to keep track so I don’t bounce things. I find in my fifteen minute window that I can
’t get into my banking account. Later, at the cottage, I tried to check my email on Rob’s phone, which he is using to watch the Tour de France results and keep up on his twitter, and my email account will no longer accept my password. uggh. Then I tried to check phone messages at home and my phone is off-line to voice mail which I don’t know how to check away from home. OK that’s my annoyingness. I could see that maybe the universe really wants me to be in Maine and not half at home, but I fret I am bouncing things and realize my attempt to control life from afar is easily thwarted.
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