I recently got gone. Rather, I got away. Or, I went on a getaway. Whatever way you choose to say it, I left home to spend a few days in Mexico. And, not spring break, Señor Frogs, Montezuma's revenge Mexico...serene, adults-only Mexico, with only a few drunken idiots mixed in...just the way I like it.
This was my first time going away in a long time. In fact, I haven't traveled internationally since 2004, so I had to renew my expired passport in order to go. Luckily, I had never updated it to reflect my married name, so that was one less government agency with whom I had to share my divorce decree. Sweet.
It took some finagling and planning, but the boyfriend and I found childcare, took off from work, etc. so that we could have four WHOLE days for our trip. In parent time, that's like two weeks. Of course, EJ got sick the day before I left, which resulted in a stressful, harried pediatrician trip in which I had the poor doctor pinky-swear me that it was okay to leave my coughing child. But, I won't even get into that. Or, I will not tell you how I forgot my entire makeup bag on EJ's Playskool table, and only realized it after we'd gotten through security at JFK. Now, before you blow off the significance of that, I must remind you that I need to draw on my eyebrows in order to look like a functioning member of society. My makeup bag did not contain frivolous items like a smoky eye kit, it contained essentials like my eyebrow tools, a comb, hair rubber bands, etc. Do you want to go on vacation with no brows or extra hair ties? I think not, my friends, I think not. So, I shed exactly three tears, put this ridiculous problem into perspective, and took fifteen minutes to buy a comb, mascara, and an eyebrow pencil. Then, I told my boyfriend to get a good look at my face with curled eyelashes and eyeliner and pronounced that I would be sporting a camping-like appearance for the next few days. Luckily, he doesn't care about that kind of stuff (and the one hair tie I did have on me lasted the whole time).
Okay, onto the actual trip. It was lovely. Being able to do NOTHING for an extended period of time was wonderful. My days were read, relax, swim, drink, repeat. And, since my parent self is incapable of sleeping in, I was able to put in full days of doing nothing from 6:30 a.m. until bedtime. In fact, we pretty much opened up the pool each morning, along with the nice men who were vacuuming it and folding beach towels. And, by the end of each night, we were truly wiped. Nothing can be tiring.
Alright, now the point of this post. Ummm, I guess nothing. Just like the point of a getaway. There are no goals, no must-dos, no checklists, no divine awakenings or revelations (usually). It's just a break. A reprieve. A recharge. A time to vacate your life and up your calorie intake, just for a bit. And maybe that in itself is a revelation. Because if you like getting back home into your routine after a getaway, you're not doing so bad for yourself. And, when your routine gets to be too much, you plan another getaway. Then repeat.
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