Did ya see that big ole elephant sitting over there? Yeah, that one, the one that keeps screaming “Rebecca is moving to London. HELLO??? Did you hear me??? REBECCA is moving to LON-DON.” I’ve been ignoring it, but I guess eventually one has to stop and actually pay attention to the elephant jumping around in the room. I mean, an elephant. It’s a large animal. And it eats peanuts. So the fact that I have been ignoring it given A’s allergy issues is huge, huge, I tell you.

All kidding aside, I have been ignoring the fact that my closest friend is picking up and moving far, far away, far enough away that I will have to count on my fingers AND factor in family schedule differences to figure out whether it is safe to call or not. And although everyone is swearing by Skype, I have a hard time picturing it working all that well for me as I tend to wander around the house while chatting on the phone.

Never mind about the bigger issues, like the fact that I have to find a new emergency contact for my kids, and figure out some way to safely hide my spare key because the keeper of the spare key is no longer going to be available to just run over every time I lock myself out (and no, you don’t REALLY want to know how frequently she arrives in my driveway dangling my key out of her window. It is just embarrassing.) And who is going to provide a mommy gut check at 7:45 in the morning when I need to decide whether to shlep to the pediatrician’s office or not?

I’m actually going to have to take my kids into the grocery store when I need one more egg to finish a quiche, or a ziploc bag in which to marinate the steak. When the going gets rough, I’ll have to deal with my kids on my own instead of inviting myself over for a playdate. And if I need a insta-sitter for an emergency doctor’s appointment, I’m going to have to call around to figure out who might be free instead of booking on the spot because I know Rebecca’s schedule backwards and forwards.

So I think I am going to just keep on ignoring that elephant over there jumping up and down for just a few more days. Perhaps when he figures out we are a peanut-free household he’ll leave for greener pastures…

As M put it on the drive home (over the screams) “Well, this year wasn’t NEARLY as bad as last year, and NEXT year should be just GREAT!” It always helps to have a “glass is half full” person in every relationship…

But seriously, the trip far exceeded my expectations. Or, rather, the kids far exceeded my expectations. They played well with each other, fairly well with Cousin C, and although they reverted back to some very undesirable sleep patterns, I have hope that they will straighten out after a few days at home. Of course C still whined his way through the vacation, “But I don’t WANT to go to the beach…” “But I don’t WANT to leave the beach…,”and A, despite her illness, still threw some massive temper tantrums. I think Cousin C learned some rather unpleasant habits during her stay. Sorry Auntie M…

OK, so on to the activities. Of which there were actually very few, as this was the vacation of the choo choo. We went to the Seashore Trolley Museum multiple times, took six (or was it seven) trolley rides and explored every inch of the place on foot. By the end of our second week all of the volunteers knew C’s name and were giving him high fives. Then Saturday we took the kids to TtFTE, which is deserving of its own post, but let’s just say C figured out within five minutes that Thomas wasn’t real, and A started crying when she saw the bobble head Sir Tophen Hatt, so the visit wasn’t even close to worth the outrageous price we paid for the tickets. But, we did manage to escape without buying anything besides a water and a muffin, so it wasn’t all bad I suppose.

The highlight of the trip for C, (outside of the trolley museum of course) was the little camp at the beach community center. He took tennis lessons and had two hours of your basic, run-of-the-mill day camp from my childhood that involved freeze tag, scavenger hunts, animal crackers, and a host of knock-knock jokes. No theme days, no enriching activities, just good old camp. And thanks to his camp experience, I met people more people during those two weeks then I have in all of the previous 20+ summers put together. Of course they all know me only as C’s mom, but it made me feel like royalty to be out to dinner with M and have kids on bikes stopping by to wave and point me out to their parents.

I know this is a cop out post, but quite honestly after the laundry and cleaning and day of normal activities, the beach seems very, very far away. And I am just a little jealous that Auntie M and Nana are still up there basking in the sun. So I’m choosing to move forward and comment that in two short weeks my children start school, and I get one morning a week (OK, two hours of one morning) in which to grocery shop in peace. And that my friends, is no small thing.

For your viewing pleasure, the beach in all its glory. And this picture was taken at 3pm. I love this beach.

We are back. If you saw a black SUV speeding down the Eastern seaboard with two children screaming their heads off despite the liberal use of a laptop as DVD player, that was us. I now need to get the “two cats have been cooped up in my house for two weeks” smell out of my house, unpack, and replace the entire contents of my fridge due to an unfortunate failure to clean it out prior to our departure. The stench, it was not pretty.

And in case anyone had any doubts, my house, it is still very much for sale. I am sure the cat and fridge stench did nothing to improve its desirableness. On the upside, I can connect to the wide wide world of the internets at a moments notice again. Which will be useful as I google “cat stench removal.”

This is my 500th post. I was planning on throwing myself a little blog party, but instead I am bowing to the Gods of childhood illnesses, as that fever of A’s I thought was gone? Yeah. Not so much.

So here I am on vacation with a feverish child who exhibits no symptoms other than a fever that seems to randomly come and go according to its own whims and wishes. As I chatted with my new best friend, the on-call nurse at my pediatrician’s office, I found myself saying over and over again “Nope, no symptoms. Eating, sleeping, drinking, peeing, pooping, playing, dancing, laughing.” And she kept saying “Nothing? No ear tugging? No tummy ache? Nothing?” Yep, nothing except the damn fever.

It took a while to convince my new best friend that I was not in fact driving BACK seven+ hours to visit her, as nice as she was on the phone. She finally understood that I was ON VACATION. WITH FEVERISH, SYMPTOMLESS CHILD. And we decided that I should watch A for another day, or maybe two, and then find a random doctor to check her ears. Or something.

I should just stop planning vacations, or major holidays, or parties, as it never fails that one child or another manages to come down with something. Hey, do you suppose I could use that as an excuse not to attend my cousin’s wedding in October? “I’m so sorry, we will not be able to attend. As I guarantee that one of my kids will be ill, so why don’t I just save you the money for our dinners and write you a lovely check?” I’m going to have to sleep on that one. It might just be my get out of jail free card.

A housekeeping note: my connection is rather slow up here so I probably won’t be around to visit much, but will stop by when I can and catch up in some fashion when I get back.

My vacation reading so far has been a re-read of A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend. The first time I read it, it was pre-kids and I was living in the middle of Manhattan. As cars honked around me, I started making mental plans to quit my job and thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. Clearly, I never quite made the finances and logistics work.

This time round, I was similarly inspired to hike the trail, although I recognized that realistically it wasn’t happening for the next two decades or so. The thought of convincing two teenagers to devote a summer to a grueling hike with Mom and Dad makes me shiver. Especially since right now C can’t walk further than the end of the driveway without whining that his legs hurt. Presumably in fifteen years his endurance will be a bit higher, but still…

Last night as I lay awake though, I started to panic (because, of course, I MUST start planning for something happening in two decades RIGHT NOW, this VERY INSTANT). “I bet my cell phone won’t work on the trail. And even if it does, I clearly won’t be able to charge it. What happens if my kids need me? What if one of them gets hurt and I am off gallivanting around the Appalachian Trail? What if something happens to my parents? They won’t be spring chickens by that point.” And on, and on the thoughts flew until I finally fretted myself to sleep.

Upon waking this morning, my first thought was “Man, I have this worrying thing DOWN. Will I ever learn to just let go and stop panicking about every little thing?” And my second thought was “Did these ‘what if’ thoughts of occur to all those people who hike the trail every year? Or did they just plunge right in assuming that their loved ones would survive for seven months without them in constant contact?” I have to assume that they had these random “what if” thoughts, and felt that the experience of hiking the trail was worth the risk. And I envy them that for as much as I would love to experience the hike, I don’t know that I could take the risk.

We finally arrived in Maine late yesterday afternoon. The vacation started out with a bang as I made it here in an all-time (with kids) record, even with the hour-long stop for lunch that included the purchase of a Happy Meal for Julia (which I had to eat as, alas, she is not here) because the toy du jour was a Polly Pocket and “Julia LOVES Polly Pocket Mommy…”

Upon our arrival, we quickly headed to the beach and I discovered that, unlike prior visits when every trip to the beach was a major workout, this year I might actually be able to use that beach chair I insist on shlepping back and forth “just in case” and supervise from a seated position. After a quick dip we had supper, and both children were deposited into bed in the same room. Which meant I actually got to put on pajamas with the lights on instead of tripping over a pack-n-play or blow up bed in the dark. “Ahhh, this is the life” I thought to myself.

Then, of course, today it all fell apart. A has decided that she doesn’t want to share with Cousin C, and that the mere sight of Cousin C is reason to cry and clutch all of her belongings and sob “Stay AWAY! MINE!” To which Cousin C nicely responds “Share? Nice? Share?” And I discovered the problem with having both children sleep in the same room is that it makes the sham of a quiet time I still enforce virtually impossible. And the noise they make wakes Cousin C, who sleeps 7 to 7 and takes a 2+ hour nap every day.

But, tomorrow is another day. One that involves sand and water and perhaps even a cup of coffee while sitting in a beach chair. Because I’m all about the beach chair this year.

C: “Mommy, do copy cats have tails?”

Mommy: “I don’t know. What do you think?”

C: “I don’t think so. (long pause) Copy cats aren’t REALLY cats, are they? They’re just people pretending to be cats, right?”