Vacation

How is it that weeks where I am working seem to drag and when I finally take some time off the time goes by in a blink?  

I felt like I was busy the whole time and didn't take enough down time before we left for our trip.  I did have a few drinks the night before we left and that took the PMS edge off slightly.  The drive there was stressful because our barely-traveled dog was climbing all over us and he was so hot no matter what we did so I was stressed out about him and my husband was tense and the boys were too.  By the time we found the Airbnb (a charming farm) we were all ready to sink into the furniture and sleep off our grouchy moods but since we were on vacation we decided instead to head to the scenic beach.  I say scenic because it is a limestone beach, no sand, and it really hurts to walk on those stones so we don't usually swim there. It was very relaxing and restorative.  Then we had an early dinner and headed back to the farm.  Our first day felt stressful and "off" but a quiet evening in gave us a chance to recover a bit.  

Saturday we headed out for a nature walk in the morning.  We arrived at the trail to find dead animals (raccoons maybe) strewn about.  Yuck. My boys handled it OK but the long grass and bugs were annoying them and we almost had a meltdown which pushed the stress levels up again.  We did a little driving around to check out different parts of the island, had a solid lunch then headed to a sand dune beach for swimming. After we got out of the frigid Lake Michigan a water snake came swimming out to see if there was any food on shore.  I am happy my sons didn't encounter that before or during swimming.  As it stands, we may not be able to convince them to swim there ever again, which is a shame because it is one of the only things we all love to do and no one disagrees with swimming.  

The boys wanted to relax at the farm after swimming so my husband and I hit a historic tavern and had a few drinks and some food.  We hit a few more scenic spots on the island before getting back to the farm in order to start a bonfire and stargaze.  The boys were pretty homesick and ready to leave by then so my husband and I sat by the fire and had a beer.  We talked about how not relaxing this trip was.  Its really hard to travel with all of us (and especially the dog, who yelped everytime we left the place) and how it would be really nice to get away on our own again like we used to back when the boys were younger and stayed with a grandparent.  Sigh.  Such is life!  We may take another trip to a less secluded place in late summer, the boys do better with less rural places.  

I had hoped to spend some time preparing for whatever diet I'm going to start soon and I bought a Mediterranean Diet e-book and it was so very horribly written that I didn't gain anything from reading it.  The I read some of Sean Anderson's blog about calorie counting and I again considered Geneen Roth's method of intuitive eating.  I need time to hash it all out in my head again.  I'm not in the greatest mood after an exhausting weekend and I go back to work tomorrow so I'm sure the stress of that will return too. Right now I'm sick of thinking about it.  The decision will present itself to me when I'm ready.  Right now I wish I could have a redo on my vacation.  I guess I'll just start looking forward to the next one. Happy Monday!