Vacation Hangover

This morning I woke up and knew it would be one of “those” days.  My first clue was that it was Day One back from vacation.  This day always stinks.  I didn’t want to leave the girls. I didn’t want to leave Mike. I wanted to be back on the beach.  Enjoying my early morning coffee with the salty sea breeze in my face and watching the sun rise and going on a ridiculously long walk down the beach with a three-year-old in flip-flops who had to be carried back to the hotel.  But alas, back to reality we must go. 

It wasn’t so hard coming back from vacation when I stayed home with the girls.  I was sad for Mike to go back to work, but let’s face it… it was him, not me going back into the abyss of emails, phone calls and instructions.  I got to stay home and parent, put the house back in order, grocery shop and welcome him home to a nice home-cooked meal.  The girls were usually pretty exhausted from travel and slept a lot and it was generally a nice day.

Enter the work world.  All I can say, is “Boo on you Work World!”.

To start off the day, I hop into the shower and notice all of my soap is gone.  I look around at my options and this is what I inventoried: Dora Strawberry Body Wash or Old Spice Body Wash: Matterhorn Scent.  Hmmm…. What to do? What to do?

I thought to myself, what if I mixed the two? Would I carry around the scent of an animated bilingual cow, complete with talking navigational system and singing backpack? Um...No Thanks!  I ditched the idea of conflicting aromas, managed to make enough soap-water out of my classy St. Ives and called it quits.

My drive to work was silent, just to enhance the impending ride of doom to my day job, where I have to be away from my kiddos and away from my husband and away from the sweet chaos I call “home”. 

I was not off to a good start. 

After enduring the morning hours, lunchtime arrived.  I was happy for a retreat, but quickly dismayed once I realized that I was still not home.  So lunch consisted of me hunched on a park bench across campus, tearing up to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” blaring from the near-by patio restaurant and texting my BFF back in Fort Worth wishing for a cup of coffee with her and the combined total of our four precious giggling little girls.  Boo. Hoo.

I muster up the dry eyes to walk back to work and lo and behold if a bird doesn’t poop all down my arm.  So, there I stand under a tree with warm white bird poo dripping down my sleeve and hand.  Thankfully there was one sweet baby wipe in my purse that I put to good use. 

What will the remainder of this afternoon bring besides a wet sweater sleeve and lingering thoughts of “Does she think I smell like bird poo?”  Only the next 165 minutes will tell. 

And tomorrow I will hopefully have a better attitude and some symbolic theological metaphor for the bird poo incident.  But for now, I’m looking forward to 5:00.