I always wanted a friend that was part swimming pool.

I did a number of things this week, none of which included meeting my daily word quota for NaNoWriMo. I did get SOME words written, but not nearly enough to stay on track. I'll be flogging myself with my laptop later...

One of the things I did was pay a visit to the travel office on post and book our Christmas vacation. When Randy was deployed, we discussed vacationing over the Christmas holiday because A.) it would be the last time that both his leave time and Rowen's school vacation time would coincide before moving stateside and B.) he would have just returned from spending a year in the southwestern Asian desert and pretty much deserved a freaking vacation. You just can't fault that logic.

A note on our family vacations: we're nerds. As such, a vacation for us includes seeing/doing/learning as much as possible on our middle-class budget. For example, eight days in Tuscany included five different cities and a dozen museums, not to mention innumerable historical sites and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a million miles covered on foot. When people say they need a vacation after their vacation - WE CAN RELATE.

Typically, we put a premium on experiences - an admirable quality, I think, for parents and nerds alike. But that does have the regrettable side effect of precluding a relaxing vacation. I've never taken one of those. What? Go somewhere for more than 48 hours without a flow-chart and itinerary? What madness is that?!

A lot of that stems from growing up poor. Not destitute - I'm not trying to fabricate a Dickensian childhood. But I do know what government cheese tastes like. "Stuff" was always too expensive, but "knowledge" was an investment and that kind of rationale is embedded deep in my psyche. Randy grew up on a farm, with all the sensible, thrifty, DIY sensibilities that implies.

For this last vacation, however, we decided that the experience we wanted most was to DO NOTHING at a place that isn't our home. I'm still having trouble saying that out loud. Witness my internal dialog:

Pay money to relax? This seems counter-intuitive. I could do nothing for free at home.
No you couldn't - you could do housework and FRG stuff and flog yourself with your laptop, but you could not  do nothing. I've seen you.
Well, what kind of learning experience could I derive from a relaxing vacation? That doesn't sound very educational.
YOU COULD LEARN TO RELAX, YOU NEUROTIC PSYCHO!!

*ahem*

Yes, well. So now we're off to the Canary Islands for a week during the Christmas break. We booked an all-inclusive retreat at a four star resort on Teneriffe, which may be a little windy at the end of December, but will most assuredly be lacking in the four feet of snow and blowing ice that Schweinfurt is likely to have.

My internal dialog is somewhat muted by the novelty of spending Christmas week poolside with a book and a never-ending supply of fruity alcoholic beverages. However, it did occur to me that this vacation costs TWICE AS MUCH as my first car. Shutting up, now.