home alone.

All your weekends sound so lovely.  I think it's interesting how you look at your own life and you think well okay, this is what we did and yes, it was nice, but to someone else where it is quite different from their own life, it sounds wonderfully enticing.

We had a woman come into our credit union today leaving to go to Italy.  And I said "OH! I am so jealous will you eat for me" and she just looked at me and said, "The food in Italy isn't any better than here".  And I just thought, oh but it must be.

It's funny because I am just a girl who still lives in her hometown.  I never have really travelled anywhere.  I had the opportunity to go to England in high school with our church group but didn't make the grades at school, so I wasn't allowed to go.  My parents have a house in Canada so I've been there and I've visited about ten of the U.S. states, but other than that I stick close to home.  I would love to travel one day.  I would especially like to go to Europe, everything is so OLD there.  I would like to go to the Caribbean Islands sometime.  I would like to go to New Zealand.  Africa, to see the elephants.  Patagonia, for it's beauty and it's reputation.  I think everyone in my family has been to Ireland but me.  My sister several times and to Scotland too.   My brother has been to France.   He also bicycled all the way across the United States with friends.

For now I stay close to home with my babies, it seems that is what you do.  That and well, single mothers aren't floating in cash for elaborate vacations are they?   I am reluctant to go anywhere without my girls.  It's just this funny thing I have.  I left them for the first time ever this year on my four day trip to Colorado which was a HUGE, scary thing for me to do.

The girls have left me right now.  They left this afternoon for a week at the beach with their father's family.  The ocean is about three hours from here.  So they are off vacationing and I am here, at home, at work.  I flew home from work and managed to see them five minutes before they left.  It was hard to watch them go.  I went up and sat with my grandmother on her porch afterward; she was watching them go as well.  I was okay then.  I came home to read my book then realized I left it at work in my hurry to get home, so I cleaned out a closet, did a load of laundry, cleaned up all the leftover toys from the downstairs.  Then I sat down and cleaned all the photos off my desktop and loaded the edited ones online.

I don't think I've managed to do that much in a week.   I didn't even manage to put some words on the page Monday, I was so spent.  I am actually looking forward to some quiet time and some decompressing.  No one to cook dinner for, no one to get after to pick up, no one fighting with each other.  It will be odd though here as soon as I go to bed.  No one to tuck in or look in on.  Going to bed without having them safe in the next room leaves me feeling....incomplete.  I wonder what the dog will do, she always climbs the stairs and settles in between their beds.  I hope that she doesn't make her way to mine, she licks her paws and it drives me crazy to hear that in the night.

So now, I will sign off.  Make that climb up the stairs.  It is amazing to think that no one will wake me in the night with a bad dream, or a tummy ache, or a foot cramp, or just checking to make sure I am still here.  I better savor it, because it will all be over soon and life will be back to normal.