Home again, home again, lickity split

I always find vacations marvelous in two distinctly opposite ways. The first is the part where you Get Away From This @*^&@ing Madhouse. The grand and glorious feeling of none of the usual domestic fretting for however-many days washes over me, and the anticipation of not having to worry about a darned thing is enough to make me cry.

This is followed by the marvelous return home, where the pillows aren’t weird and the sheets don’t smell funny, you’re not spending $5 for a lukewarm mocha which is waaaaaay too sweet, and by the way where all your stuff is. Oh. And the kids, too.

Four days is actually my upper limit for kid-free vacations. (Two is my upper limit for kid-encumbered ones.) (Just kidding.) (No I’m not.) (Yes, yes I am.) (Huh-UH! Have you ever tried to deal with four kids in a hotel room for more than a long weekend?! And have you ever been a kid trying to deal with a parent who is trying to deal with four kids in a hotel room for more than a long weekend?!?! Three days is long enough for all of us, thank-you-very-much!)

ANYWAY.

We had a marvelous time. We stayed in the worst room in the best hotel at the Disneyland resort: The Grand Californian. Our room had no view (awwwwww, the sorrow! Because of course, all I ever do at a resort is sit around staring out my window…), and was located directly over some garbage bins so every morning at 7:00 sharp there was a great deal of metallic banging and thumping and rummaging around going on outside.

Being that I was already awake by 7:00, I didn’t care a fig. Usually we get up around 5:00, so 7:00 is a pretty considerable lie-in for us. And then I’d get in the shower and loiter around in there, with nobody banging on the door yelling, “Mommy? Whacha doin’? Can I have a snack? Can I watch TV? Mommy? I need something! Are you going to be done soon? Mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy…!”

Luxury, my friends, has many, many levels. Which I think is also exemplified by the fact that one of my other “favorite things I did on this vacation” was sitting in front of the big fireplace working on the Pacific Northwest shawl. It is coming along nicely so far – which isn’t very far, granted, but I haven’t had any major disasters yet. The only thing I’m wondering is how well the lace is going to show up in end – this is a beautiful, somewhat dramatic variegated silk. A solid color would probably be better for showing off the ‘seagulls, pine trees, waves and fish’ patterns. But undaunted, I’m carrying on. I love these colors, and if the patterns don’t show quite as nicely, well shoot. I’ll just have to make it again in a solid color sometime.

What was really funny was that children, surrounded by Disney characters and rides and non-stop Fun! And! Excitement!, were still enamored of the knitting. I had a sock with me in the park to keep me busy in the lines, and I swear there were kids walking into things because they were so busy staring at it.

I even got a yarn store experience on the way home! We had to stop in Monrovia to pick up a stereo for a friend, and by golly Unraveled was literally 900 feet from the stereo store! So while my husband was picking up the stereo, I wandered down the street to fondle alpaca, dig through a newly arrived box of Koigu and check out the sale yarns.

This is a beautiful store, a real visual treat, with a wide assortment of yarns at various price-points and a nice selection of books and patterns. I only wish I a) had more cash money to spend and b) could by any stretch of the imagination pretend that I needed more yarn and/or pattern books.

But my husband bought me some yarny goodness as a birthday present, so I didn’t have to walk away empty handed. I got two skeins of Koigu in…hmm, what to call this? it’s fairly muted but still interesting, kind of “foresty” with leanings toward camouflage…and a big ball of Tofutsies in a soft purple.

And then we got back on the freeway and highballed it back home in record time. It was so good to get home to all the Denizens; funny how you can be so eager to get away from them, and then start to miss them within hours. We stopped one (1) time in the six hour drive home, for a drive-thru burger and coffee.

It is so good to be home. Even though we were immediately confronted with stacks of ‘Important Tax Documents Enclosed!’ and memos from school like, “Boo Bug didn’t turn in her writing homework” and “your child bombed the GATE exam” (yes, Eldest bombed it – we suspect that she did it on purpose because she doesn’t want to change schools yet), and a note from Captain Adventure’s teacher stating that he was sneezing continually and had a really runny nose Monday (read as, “Your child is sick, you nasty people! Keep him home!”).

Ah yes. It’s good to be home.