Ready for Vacation

I am deep in the middle of planning next year's summer vacation. You think I am crazy? Hotels in the National Parks book up a year in advance. Easter will find us in Big Bend and August will find us in the Dakotas visiting Mount Rushmore, Badlands, and Theodore Roosevelt National Parks.

We take a lot of vacations. We don't drive fancy cars. We don't spend a lot of money on our interior design. My kids don't wear designer clothes.

We travel. After 15 years of marriage and many, many moves, I can't sit still for long. Besides, my husband just found out he is eligible for one more week of vacation than he thought he was. We will now have to fill five weeks instead of four. We also have to use those two carry-over weeks sometime.

Just for Laughs

Check this out ... Catalog Living.

Many thanks to Laura at 11D for sharing this. I needed to laugh out loud.

So two weeks became ...

almost a month without writing.

To be perfectly honest, I have settled into a mild depression. I don't want to live in Houston. I don't want to raise my kids here or drive here or shop here or eat here.

I want to live here.



O.K. so this would be tough as it is accessible only by a 4 mile mountain hike. Close to here would be nice. Close to here so I could visit and take my kids to see this more than once a year. Close to hiking and white-water rafting and skiing in the winter.

I want to be far away from the maddening rat-race of our lives.

I'll get better. I'll snap out of it. I'll reengage in my life and start reading and teaching and participating. But I don't want to .

I want to move to Montana.

Excuses, Excuses

photos by David Restivo

Not that I have been busy blogging a lot this summer, but I won't be again for about 2 weeks. I am going to Glacier National Park. Aren't you jealous?

I'll have photos of my own to share when I get home.

This Time He Has Gone to Far

My husband, that is.

He left 5 days ago and went to Paris and Antwerp.

Soon he will be on a plane bound for Columbo, Sri Lanka.

Please do not get any ideas that this is in any way glamourous or fun. It is work and he hates it.

Sri Lanka is, however, a new country for him. I can't remember if it is number 40 or 41. He could also add Qatar and U.A.E, but when we count countries we believe you actually have to leave the airport. Well, I count Japan even though I never left Narita, but I spent 14 hours in that airport with two young children. I paid my dues there.

To get home he will take two planes and fly 21 hours. He will leave Sri Lanka at 3:15 AM his time and get home at 4:25 PM my time.

That is too far away from me and the boys. We miss him. We have been trying to fill our days. It doesn't help much.