I recently returned from a week away with Angela and the girls. Note the omission of the word “vacation” which I’ve reserved for the long gone days of Penrod’s/Beachcomber T’s…being 1 of 8 guys stuffed into a 1BR motel (simply because the brochure said it was “conveniently located near the beach”), sleeping with a solitary pillow in an empty bathtub (which at the time was actually more comfortable than it sounds) and awaking slightly before noon for the delicacy of an egg sandwich on a hardened & questionable roll at the corner bodega.
Don’t get me wrong, my family’s had it’s share of dining with the princesses and pruning my flesh from the 17th time down the flume, while our neighbors in the NE were shoveling out, but the word vacation has gone through a transformation process as I’ve aged.
So this time, to really get immersed within it all, we decided to stop cold turkey…to UNPLUG. Which was, for the most part, a success. We needed to escape it all & leave our laptops at home. And after being pleasantly awoken by our daughter’s friend at 6:30a, via FaceTime on her stowaway iTouch, we tucked that away as well. Into our suitcase for the remainder of the vacation.
The unplugged environment left us with more time for connect the dots, pictionary on random napkins and just spontaneous laughter, conversation & a few tears. Overall, a success. And I didn’t have to wash that smudged stamp off the back of my hand when I returned home!
