My Summer Vacation

To all the wonderful people that read the drivel on this blog:

I'm baaaaack!

As I mentioned on another post, for me it is always a pleasure to come back to the office. I am aware that I am opposite of most people. Most people dread going back to the office especially after a long weekend or a vacation. But my experience has been that when I am home I get EXHAUSTED by all the activity, commotion, communicating, "cooking" (as in breakfast, snacks, lunch, snacks, dinner, snacks), stuff that has to be done because you are not working (as in getting the AC fixed, cleaning out the possum-infested garage, actually having to do laundry because we are all home and are using 4 towels a day and changing clothes twice a day).

When I go on vacation, I feel rushed to do everything and see everything (as in when in the Bahamas you MUST swim with the darn dolphins or walk through blocks of little boutiques selling souvenirs from the Bahamas that are "Made in China"), and then I get home and have huge piles of vacation clothing to wash/dry/return-to-drawers-and-closets, piles of mail (actually that should be "bills") to go through, and tend to other assorted disasters that happen when one is gone. Sigh.

So when I walk into my junkmail-infested, but serene air-conditioned office full of abandoned, wilted potted plants and see my voice mail indicator tell me I have 27 voice mails, I am happy because I can do everything sitting down and with my feet up on my hard drive. Aaaaah! What a relief! To actually do productive work, not just putting stuff away in drawers that I will be seeing in 1.5 days back in the darn hamper!

I am ecstatic to be back! Missed you all.

News:

We had a wonderful week despite the laundry. We went to the beach, lazed around and played old super-"intendo" games, caught up on what toothless, fat middle-americans are up to via Jerry Springer (Yes, they are still fighting each other shirtlessly or disgustingly showing their boobies).

We cleaned the garage, and we are happy to announce that our garage floor is now visible in certain areas and the "stuff" we have accumulated and still haven't a clue as to why, is now in a semi-orderly state and will continue to sit there for a couple more years until we can part with whatever it is.

My son leaves back to camp tomorrow, and then deploys mid-July. I actually sat around a lot during my week off, thinking of ways that I could prevent him from going. I seriously thought (and this scared me) that if I hit him with something and he broke an arm or a leg, he would end up staying here. Is that crazy? Allow me to answer myself: Yes, it is, big time. But it is craziness due to motherly love. It is biological, it has no sanity to it, no logic. And you know how dangerous THAT can be, so I chilled and resorted again to praying without really being convinced of how effective that is, but then what else can I do? So, here I am steely-faced, dry-eyed, ready to kiss him goodbye again so he can go to war. Big Sigh.

My son's girlfriend lost her mom Monday night. This is a long story, and since it is not my story to tell, I would rather respect their privacy. They are 5 sisters, from 28 to 10 years of age that just lost their mother unexpectedly. They do not have fathers because they either died or took off. All they have is each other and their 87 year old grandmother. My heart got all scrunched up for them, I felt so badly and it's one of those situations where there is nothing a person can do, just hug and talk in soft tones to try to comfort. That's what I did.