Vacation!

Hey, there, Internet. Were you wondering where I was all last week? No? Well, I didn’t miss you either. Nyah. Because we went on vacation! It was a secret vacation, because Consumer Reports told me not to tell the internet if I was going away because it’s like saying, “Hey, robbers! Come to my house! It will be empty!” Except now that I think of it, I may as well have told you as the house was not, in fact, empty all week because the tile guy was here. He was cleaning the grout, re-caulking the tub, and switching out a few tiles for us that were damaged. It was supposed to take him a day, maybe two, but we are idiots and forgot to leave the tiles out for him which made it challenging for him to switch out the damaged ones. He tried to call us, but our cell phone reception was surprisingly bad, so we didn’t get the message until we were on our way home. Fortunately, he colluded with the neighbor who had agreed to water our plants, and they braved a trip to the billion-degree attic to find the tiles. So he did manage to finish, but it took him all week. And our caulking is no longer a biohazard! This is so thrilling to me, I can’t tell you.

Speaking of the billion-degree attic, I had to go up there myself yesterday to put away the down comforter, because just the sight of it in heat like this is enough to make me feel ill. On the way up, I saw something out of the corner of my eye on the bottom step that I thought was a hammer or wrench or some such. On the way back down, I got a better look. You want to know what it was? You don’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway. It was a dead bird. A DEAD BIRD. We have some sparrows nesting in our gutter. We are aware this is bad, but we figured we’d let them finish out the season and then seal it up for next year rather than pull down the nest full of babies. So my theory is that the bird got through the flashing or something into the attic, couldn’t get out, and dropped dead from the heat. I didn’t step on it, but I am still fairly traumatized.

And now is the part of the blog wherein I force you to look at my vacation photos. We rented a cabin on a small lake with one of my sisters and her family, and we got to go for a week. A whole week! We haven’t had a week’s vacation in over four years, so we were giddy with excitement. And it was awesome. AWESOME. My only worry had been that Nora wouldn’t sleep, but she did! Not through the night or anything, but she gave us the critical few hours between her bedtime and our bedtime, and that is all I wanted. Plus, vacationing with my sister’s family ensured that we didn’t get sick of each other and also that there were enough adults there to give both Andrew and me legitimate time off. I spent one afternoon just reading on the beach. And I got to go running as much as I wanted.

Other highlights include a trip to a little kids’ amusement park, a motorboat ride (Nora: not so much a fan), and a day of swimming with a bunch of cousins. We checked a lot of things off Jack’s life list last week.






First smore


Bliss




I KNOW.






Yaaay! Boats!


Why are you making me wear this enormous orange torture device? And I am getting WET. DO NOT LIKE.


That's a lemon.


See?



(Let me explain the life list: Jack has a habit of saying things like, “Mom, I’d like to ride in a blimp some day,” and I always reply along the lines of, “Yeah, that would be fun, Jack. Maybe someday we can!” Recently I started saying, “Let’s add it to the list!” But we don’t call it a “life list” or anything. So now we have fun listing all the things we’d like to do someday, and if we’ve done it already, we say, “CHECK!” And nothing is too trivial to be added to the list. Example of checked items: Swimming in a pool. Riding a scooter. Riding in a motorboat.)

I am going to post this even though it’s terrible because I need to feel like I’ve accomplished something during Jack’s preschool time. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, and the heat’s making me feel anxious and distracted like I did when I was post-partum with Nora. Or as though I’ve had six cups of coffee. It’s quite unpleasant.