Never again.

Oh, I’m still here. Or rather, I am back after a grueling 2-week odyssey around the southeastern United States in a rented PT Cruiser (mmm, lovely) with my husband and child. This trip, ridiculously classified for purposes of time off from my employment as “vacation,” was the farthest thing from a holiday that I could possibly imagine. It was work, and harder work than any regular old day job at that. We flew into Atlanta, and over the course of the next two weeks racked up 1800 miles on that piece of crap toy car as we drove to Charlotte, over to Raleigh, down to Savannah and south into Florida, then back up to south Georgia and, gasping for air, over the finish line back into the Budget parking lot at the Atlanta airport.

All of this delightful travel was to present the royal baby to his extended family for viewing. Initially I had hoped to rent a place at the beach for a week then do a little extra family visitation, but one party’s mother was miffed that we had not visited her home while we had made time for visits to Mexico, France and England over the last couple of years, and so our plans for any selfish use of the “vacation” were scrapped in order to placate and mollify. That said, that part of the trip was probably the nicest, as the mom in question went out of her way to make our visit as easy as possible by setting up an adorably decorated separate room for Eeyore complete with loads of toys and books, cooking us lots of Southern treats, and generally being a doting mother and grandmother. In fact, I have no complaints at all about the actual visits to family; it was great to see everyone and all our hosts were very generous and tried to make what was obviously a supremely unrelaxing adventure as easy and pleasant as possible.

Anyway, there’s no point in bitching about it too much, because it’s over and I don’t want to think of it as shitty when it wasn’t, really. It’s just a fact that travel with an-almost-one-year old is tough and we were stupid to have tried to pack in so many people and destinations. But now we’re home and tasked with trying to undo some of the bad habits we got into on the road, such as bringing Eeyore into bed with us when he’d wake up at 5:00 in the morning crying at the top of his well-developed little lungs.















There is one highlight from our trip, however, and that was meeting the most delightful and talented Broady. We Lilac-Architects drove the hour from my dad’s house in Florida to the very cute home she shares with her husband and 3-month old baby. She and her husband made a fabulous dinner, which I’m not sure how they managed with a tiny baby but they did, and we all had a great time getting to know each other (she confirmed this, so I feel comfortable speaking for her, too). Actually, it was kind of a bummer, since both R. and I really liked both her and her husband a lot, and it’s not that often you meet people you’d like to actually hang out with. In fact, the older I get it hardly seems to happen at all, so this was especially nice. Eeyore was also very interested in Broady’s baby, but mostly in just climbing over him or trying to poke him in the eye. I was a bit embarrassed by Eeyore’s Russian-tank behavior, but what could I do?















Meanwhile, I haven’t even seen or read the news in 2 weeks, so I can’t even comment on what’s going on in the world today (except, of course, (1) to wonder WTF Obama was doing chit chatting with an evangelical pastor and (2) exhorting him NOT to choose Kaine or Bayh as his running mate). I’m sure after I have a chance to regroup and rest up from my vacation I’ll find something to say…