Is It June Yet?

How to know when you should take a vacation:

1. You spend over two hours in your sons' bedroom helping them sort through their crap stuff junk treasures and wind up with three garbage bags and a box of stuff to send to Goodwill and a bag and a half of pure, unadulterated trash to send to the dump.*

2. You spend an hour with your youngest daughter culling through her stuff and come up with two bags and a couple of things that don't fit in bags to send to Goodwill.

3. It has rained every other day and you have read through both books by Sunday evening that you checked out from the library on Thursday.

4. A trip to the library is not on your current schedule because the last time you went, the two children you left in charge got into a fight and wound up with horrible bruises on their bodies.

5. Your husband arrives home from skiing in one piece (thanks be to God) but looking windswept and tanned and full of enthusiasm for the trip he wants the family to take to Lake Tahoe next spring and the only thing you can think is "How much laundry will I have to do after such a trip?"

6. You spend waaaaaay too much time lugging your father-in-law's seen-better-days chair downstairs because you absolutely, positively need something to fill that empty corner in the family room.

7. Then you spend waaaaaaay too much time imagining your husband's sweetly surprised reaction when he discovers his dad's old chair sitting in the family room where God and everyone can see it. You then spend waaaaay too much time patting yourself on the back for getting over yourself and figuring out a way for this thing heirloom to take a place of honor in your family room. You further spend waaaaay too much time daydreaming about how friends will question the piece of furniture and how you will defend it's place and how they will think you are awesome for allowing it where the public can see it.

8. After your husband's non-reaction when he sees the chair that you spent waaaaay too much time on, you will spend waaaaaaay too much time plotting ways to make sure that your mother lives at your house in her dotage.

9. You will forget that Easter weekend is coming up and the Easter bunny needs to hit the stores to fill the Easter baskets.

10. You will forget that Easter weekend and Spring Break are coinciding and you will forget to book a place at the boarder's for the dumb dog. Hence, the dumb, carsick dog will be coming with you for Easter weekend. Way to go, jerkface!

11. You will watch "500 Days of Summer" and "The Blindside" in one weekend and will declare them both the best movies you've seen in a while. Then you will forget and mention it to your husband who abandoned was gone on business for a week and you will feel guilty when you mention that you rented the movies "On Demand" rather than hitting the Red Box.

12. You will drink wine on weeknights. (Slainte!)

13. You will inform your children that times they are a-changin' and that they should be prepared to pull their weight when you go back to work in the fall. Your children will not bat an eye before they say "Okay, mom" with no further discussion.

14. Then your 13 year old will inform you that she would rather clean her room when she feels like it, because then she is more motivated than when you ask her to clean it. She declares that when you ask her to clean it, it feels as if she lives in a totalitarian society.

15. You curse your public school system for the social studies curriculum that is teaching your child things like "democracy" and "totalitarianism."

16. You inform your child, with only a small stream of smoke coming out of your ears, that she may make the decision to clean her room when she feels like it when she is paying the mortgage. Your further state that since she is only asked approximately quarterly to do a thorough cleaning of her room, that perhaps she should figure out a way to, in the words of the fabulous Tim Gunn, "make it work," unless she wants to discover what it feels like to live in a tent.

17. You will drink more wine on weeknights. (Salut!)

18. You will take your children to a park and cringe when your 5 year old says that people have been writing inside the slide tunnels. You will cringe and blush when she starts to read the letters of the words that have been written. You will look be ashamed of yourself for thinking the worst when the letters she reads out spell "I- L-O-V-E-Y-O-U." (Get your mind out of the gutter, Sara!)

19. You get down on the floor with the dumb dog and pet her and tell her sweetly that if she barfs in the car on the way to your parents' home that you will clean up the mess and find the nearest Humane Society and drop her off there.

20. You hate that your computer doesn't work, but delight in the fact that your husband is home so that you can use his without leaving the comforts of your own home (there's wine here!).

21. You snuggle in bed with your beloved and your beloved's computer and plan your summer vacation and then you dream that it is already summer.

*To be fair, there were a couple of boxes in the boys' room that needed going through after we moved in and due to my lack of will, were never gone through until now. It is to their credit that they were able to go through so much stuff and decrapify and donate so much to others.

Also, my husband arrived home safely and without injury. Thanks for your prayers. He is on fire for Lake Tahoe. I may need your prayers next spring.