A Vacation from Vacationing
Today we drove through thick gray smog from Banning to Los Angeles. Tonight we're at my stepson Aaron's house enjoying his and his wife Ruthie's hospitality for the night, playing with my five-year-old granddaughter Cordelia, and eating delicious Korean mall food. A vacation from the vacation, as it were.
I'm exhausted, and I still have 480 miles of driving up the coast to go.
I'm not sure how I thought I could do it all -- have a vacation with my daughter, blog everyday, comment on other people's blogs, keep up with my emails, write my Literary Mama column, read a manuscript I'm desperately looking forward to reading, prepare to start teaching my summer school classes in early July, check in with my husband in Madagascar, keep tabs on my housesitting friends and sister-in-law, sightsee, and do all the driving on this ten day, 2,000 mile trip.
And write.
Of course the first thing to go was the writing, it always is. Then the commenting, and the email, and the column, and the summer school prep... but at least I'm blogging. Right?
(Right?)
A few more pictures from the trip:
- A most awesome honey/avocado/horseradish roadside stand in Banning, truly one of the old classics, tragically closed on Wednesdays (and today is Wednesday).
- A drive-thru dairy in... somewhere up the road off I-10. The guy came out when I was taking pictures and said it was a landmark from the 1940's.
- Dinner in Los Angeles!!!! My delicious Dolsot Albap from the Korean Mall before, and after. Man, do I miss Asian food when I don't eat it at least three times a week.
- My beautiful granddaughter Cordelia. (Note the King Lear reference.)
- My antique typewriter, the one I bought yesterday in Arizona for $40. Well, this one isn't mine, it's one at auction, but it's the same model, and mine is in about the same condition. Circa 1919-ish. SCORE!
Tomorrow's our last full day of this road trip. Good thing, as we're running out of clean clothes.
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sonshi (not verified) says:
Oh my
You are superwoman! Wow you must be one of those people who don't need caffeine -- you have your own internal supply. :-)
I hope you're having fun, and that is what it's all about.
Ericka Lutz says:
Oh, I need caffeine.
I'm so NOT superwoman, I just keep trying, and keep learning that I really can't do everything I try to do...
I went without caffeine for 3 years -- I felt great. But I missed the zippiness, however transitory.
Lisa Solod Warren says:
vacationing from writing
Ah, Erika, I, too, am suffering from your complaint. With back to back "vacations" it seems all I do is play catch up upon my return... and then it is on to packing, taking the cat to be boarded, watering plants, doing laundry. What goes? Yes, the writing AND the blogging AND the other work. I am hoping to do work on my next trip but as it is to "celebrate" my mother's 80th, a woman with Alzheimer's who needs constant attention, I doubt much will get done......
Ericka Lutz says:
Sorry about your mom, Lisa
We just lost my father-in-law after 8 years battle with dementia, and the year before that, my grandmother. It's a horrific disease, yes, for them, but as much for the family in some ways. The constant wearing.
We all cry for our vacations, and then are so thrilled to get home -- exhausted from being out of our normal patterns/life I think.
Jessica Barksdale Inclan says:
Because I am reading the Tao today
here's what Lao-tzu said about travel (yes, a metaphor, but let's take it literally):
Why should the lord of the country
flit about like a fool?
If you let yourself be blown to and fro,
you lose touch with your root.
If you let restlessness move you,
you lose touch with who you are.
And that is usually how I feel while on vacation and then when I come back. I'm glad I went but sometimes, I don't know why I did!
You've done admirably with the blogging, and it will all come back in moments upon your return!
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
Ericka Lutz says:
YES.
I was posting my response to Lisa just as you were posting this comment, Jessica. Lao-tzu is right.
It's a pain to get out of town, those piles of work to do, and a pain to get back, those piles of work to do. And it's exhausting in the middle.
And yet I think that "losing touch with your root" is necessary, too... we grow when we are irritated. Irritated by getting out of our comfort zone, certainly. The stimulus of travel gives us -- later, at home, on reflection -- new material in our lives and writing. (Plus we've had so much fun...)
Susan K Ito says:
thanks for the vicarious vacation...
It's been a blast following you on your adventures. I for one am very glad you've kept up the blogging! And I agree that the plans and "goals" we have for vacations often fal short.... (except, of course, when one is at a writing colony - that to me is a perfect vacation)
Huntington Sharp says:
From a purely selfish point of view...
...i'm glad you jettisoned everything except for blogging. Annie sure looks happier with her noodles than she did with her Kountry-Fried Krap the other day!
Huntington Sharp, Red Room