The one in which I admit that I need a vacation.
Need is a strong word, but really want…as in want to badly my daughter’s hair is falling out and my eyes well up with tears when I think about being anywhere that involves a painful trip to an airport where I will gladly put my bag in the overhead and slam my hip bone into every person on my way back to my seat.
Yes, that kind of vacation.
The kind where I am not taking pictures for someone else. The kind where I don’t even bring a camera because no matter how many pictures I took, it couldn’t capture the beauty of it, the enormity of it, the FEEL of it.
In the past I use to pull up ‘vacation deals’ and just pretend I was going. Sometimes the pretending would go so far as buying something for the trip. By the way, I will SOMEDAY find a place I can wear the sequined top with a peacock on the front. Those damn Vegas deals get me every time. I then realize that if I am going to Vegas I am going to come home broke as fuck and the trip in my head was much better than the actual trip I could have taken.
That does seem to be the end result. I take a mind vacation. Once I went to Greece and lounged on the deck of my villa with a glass of wine in one hand and fifty cent Harlequin romance I found at a thrift store in town. It was the best mind vacation I have ever taken.
I’ve only been on two vacations that I wasn’t ‘working’. Both trips were to Maui. Both trips included a ridiculous amount of scuba diving. It’s going to sound sad, but if I could book a vacation (ha! Right!) I would probably go back and do it all over again.
Get to the airport with the butterflies and anticipation of seeing the beauty of Maui would be the most amazing feeling. When you depart the plane and it smells of plumeria fill the whole terminal.
My favorite part of the trip, you would guess would be standing out on the beach looking out at the ocean. It’s my second favorite part. The first part is walking into the dive shop and buying my air tanks.
There is something about the smell of the neoprene and the buzz of knowing it won’t be long before you have all your gear on and walking down that beach or back rolling off the side of a boat.
Time’s up for this mind vacation. Time to get back to reality where I am wondering if I will have enough money to make sure my daughter has enough for her senior yearbook.