On Making the Right Decision
For all the greatness that our trip turned out to be, we had a rough, rough start. The evening before we left, both Barry and I got sick and we put off leaving because there was NO way I was getting off the bathroom floor. It was awful. Poor Maggie had two parents that were feeling less than stellar, not the best way to start a long-awaited vacation.
But it gets worse. Doesn’t it always, at least before it gets better?
The next day when we finally started driving, many hours past our original ETD, we had to establish a new rule in our car: Maggie is NOT allowed to eat or drink in the car. She gets car sick and we’re just not willing to clean up puke over and over again. This meant that we stopped frequently and our car was by far the stinkiest on the road.
But our arrival to our new precious home was met with high-fives and sighs of relief because we’d decided on a whim to rent the cabin and only had a few pictures from the owner’s website. A revolving conversation on our few-day drive was about our rental cabin and a shared fear that perhaps we should have done a bit more research.
At last we arrived and it seemed that Maggie and Sydney kept doing Sun Salutations just to make sure the weather would stay because our cabin was spitting distance to the beach and the puking had stopped!!
We popped open a bottle of champagne (thanks, Sue!), busted open the windows and doors, found our flip-flops and headed to the beach with huge smiles plastered on our faces. The cabin was perfect in a funky, rustic way. Aside from moving the living room coffee table to the extra bedroom, because Maggie was jumping off of it, it was perfect for our little family. And did I mention the beach was outside our door?
Watching the sunset that first night and sipping on champagne, while Maggie and Sydney continued doing their Sun Salutations, both Barry and I decided that it might be a few days before we felt like getting back in the car. It became abundantly clear, after just a few short hours of being at our cabin, that we’d made the right decision to come. There was something for everybody, plus a little left over in case we wanted more…..and we wanted more.
Before I Get Too Far Ahead of Myself
We returned from our vacation this past weekend with solid reminder of what real life feels like, because we really hadn’t been experiencing real life at our little cabin by the sea in Carmel. Babies (who are really toddlers) weren’t teething. People (at least not us) weren’t working. Pugs weren’t lonely. And the rain was not anywhere to be seen.
Now we’re home and there’s certainly a feeling of comfort and joy (not in a splashy holiday way, but more in a “I love my bed and I forgot about my boots” type of way). You know?
I took hundreds upon hundreds of photos and I’ve had a few moments here and there to look at them and they make me feel so happy. We’re not the same people in those photos – we can’t be. Are we that lucky? We are.
I’m holding on dearly to the version of me that I discovered on vacation, I’m forcing Barry to maintain his “Vacation B” persona as well. We’re better people that way and it makes settling back into real life at a slower pace easier because teething, working, lonely dogs and rain are just not cool. Not at all.
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“You are drawing on me again! I can feel it! You’re drawing on me again!”
That’s what I’m hearing right now between Barry and Maggie. And Maggie is laughing. She’s got a bunch of pens dumped out on top of him. This is the first time in almost two days that she hasn’t had a fever or been super grumpy and so getting drawn on isn’t half bad. We’ll take it.
But that means that instead of writing and photo sharing, I’m going to go and see about all those pens scattered about and the giggles coming from Maggie’s mouth.
The photo series of Maggie in the blue hat are from the day before we left on our trip. The one below is two days later after we drove (with piles of puke in our car) and reached our destination…..
