Vacation or Business Trip?

Tomorrow morning, well it's actually already tomorrow so later this morning, we're headed to the Detroit area for the Fourth of July. My brother always has a big party at his house. He has a huge backyard and lives on a canal to a lake, so the kids swim and go out on the boat and we all have a good time hanging out. When it's time for the fireworks we take the boat to the middle of the lake and watch as the neighborhood show goes off right above our heads. It's very cool and the kids love it.

Charlie is coming for the weekend, but then he is heading back home to make the bacon. Why do they say make bacon? What does that have to do with money anyway? Getting back on track, although the though of bacon does make me drift off into a happy place, I am staying in Michigan for two weeks with the kids while lucky Charlie gets to stay home in a quiet, empty house. I'm only a little jealous. Of course I will get to spend time with my parents and my high school friends and enjoy 80 degree weather instead of 100 degree nastiness, but the idea of having the house to myself for a bit is quite nice.

Anyway, that wasn't really my point. Charlie was telling me about some conversation he was having with a few people about a show that they were watching on tv. The woman on the show was saying that as a stay at home mom, when you go on vacation you don't really get a vacation. You take your work with you. Therefore, it's really a business trip. Funny, and technically true. You never really get a chance to escape your job or the people you are with all day long. When you go on vacation, the vacation part of it is that your spouse is now with you to share in the joy of spending time with your cranky, whiny, bossy, argumentative children.

So, are we really going on vacation? In some ways yes, in some ways no. Yes, because I'll get to spend time visiting with friends and I won't have to do all the things, like gobs and gobs of laundry and cooking the meals, that I would have to do if I was sitting around my own house. No, because the kids will still be with me. Aww, I make it sound like I don't want to be with my kids. Not true, I love them dearly. But I could also use a break from them since the only other time I get any peace and quiet is at 1:15 a.m. the night before we are leaving on a long trip because I found a cloth diaper in my diaper bag that absolutely had to be washed before we left (I can only imagine what a moldy mess that will be if I wait until we get back to wash it).

I know I chose to stay home and I wouldn't change that for the world, but every once in awhile it would be nice if they had a mandatory stay-at-home mom conference in some tropical locale that did not allow children.