a REAL vacation

Green Drina, originally uploaded by Katarina 2353.

It's summer, and the amount of friends and family announcing various plans for vacations is making me a bit green with envy, I confess. You see, any vacation I have taken since my husband and I got together has been a "vacation". That is to say, there is always a reason, some underlying task involved.

We have gone to visit family and once, friends (although that time involved a visit for my son to see his biological dad, which was no vacation for anyone). Don't get me wrong, I love my family and friends. Hell, I don't see them often ENOUGH, since most are scattered hither and yon.

It's just... well, I'd like to take a vacation whose sole purpose was FUN. Relaxation. No time table, expectations, fears of hurting so and so's feelings if we didn't see them, see them again before we left, or spent X amount of time with them before we went home. It's gotten so we plan a day of vacation after we get home from vacation, just so we can be able to relax from our vacation. Not to unpack (which I do anyway), mind you- just to finally unwind.

In one day. At home. While unpacking. No pressure there. Ha. Hell, we don't even go out to eat that day or even order a damn pizza! Hmph.

This phenomena is so common now that part of "going on vacation" involves me spending the week before cleaning, doing all the laundry, making sure the grocery shopping is done for a week after we get back, packing for the trip, and then leaving the house immaculate- just so there is less to stress about while we're trying to unwind the day we get back.

THAT is something worthwhile, a habit I'll keep even for a "real" vacation. It's genius, if I do say so myself. I've witnessed people trashing their houses while packing, just excited to go, and maybe they possess some joie de vivre I don't understand- I'm just happy as hell I come home to MY house and not THEIRS. Perhaps I'd be happier if I lived in filth and didn't care. Perhaps if I wasn't allergic to most filth (dust, mold) I could find out.
*cocks one HEPA happy eyebrow*
I'd rather have allergies. Really.

Part of the problem is my OCD/OCPD husband, who is doing much better at learning how to relax, but isn't ready for an actual vacation yet. Yes, immersion therapy sounds great, theoretically, but unless he's going on this vacation with his shrink, I want no part of it. I don't want to have to be The Bad Guy who reminds him over and over that relaxing can be his only Task, but learning calculus, studying new programming languages, staying current on cutting edge IT and AI and freaking ET technologies are not Tasks that one should associate with vacation. If he could approach such things with a relaxed attitude, maybe, but he's still got a ways to go before one could describe his attachments to learning things as much less than "obsessive" and/or "compulsive", and his reaction to being interrupted is usually some varying shade of tightly restrained rage.

No, thanks. It's like asking a Type A med student to blow some money on going somewhere fun the week before final exams and trying to get them to lay down the books and have fun with you. Sound fun to you?

Me neither.

Don't think I'm pulling this out of nowhere- he and I had a conversation, a few months ago, about this lack of real vacation conundrum. He stared at me like I was a total asshole and said, "What would we DO on a 'real' vacation? Lay around and do nothing? I'd have to bring a calculus book along just for something constructive to do." I thought he was kidding, and dropped the conversation dead in the murky, murky waters as soon as I realized he was actually serious.

So.... go without him? Wait until Some Day?

I married him for better or worse. This doesn't fall under the "better" category, but is it that big a deal?

Footbridge over Nam Khan river, originally uploaded by Bеn.

*sigh*