Leave Me Alone. I’m on Vacation.

Current Situation

The day starts with my daughter asking me which one of us I think is going to cry first.

The red roller-bag gapes open on the top of my bed. A row of folded pants lies next to it—in the Mari Kando style so that they stand up like tents. So that they spark joy.

In three hours I will be working my last shift before vacation. It’s the Ventura Wine Walk, which is an event I am afraid of. Participants carry empty cups to all the participating venues in the downtown area and get a little pour of a little something before they move on to the next venue and repeat this ritual until they stumble into a restaurant and terrorize servers like me with their purple teeth and loud voices.

And then tomorrow it’s away to an Airbnb on a wooded coastline.

My sister walks in, sees that I have this picture out and says, “What—are we going to recreate this photo?”

Then she sees this picture next to it and says, “What are you just looking at pictures and thinking about being together?”

Well, of course her questions make me feel like an I don’t know what—like a person who is too sentimental, maybe.

I have the pictures out because I’m writing this thing to tell the Internet that I’m going to be away with my sisters this week, so that my mental tie to the Internet doesn’t nag at me about “posting something.”

I’m cleaning the house before I leave, so I don’t have to come back to my own filth and feel sad about vacation being over. And yeah, I’m thinking about my sisters. And sisters in general. And this trip is—when it comes down to it—the reason I got a second job in the first place.

I now have so much money that I can afford the express delivery of a portable bidet. My sisters and I have all become hooked on bidets and can’t fathom the idea of a week of dry wipes.

I am vacuuming kitty litter from the kitchen floor when I realize one of the things that most bugs me about my little sister is her inability to pronounce the word bougainvillea. She doesn’t know how to say it—always leaves out the ‘n’—but that doesn’t stop her from repeating the word over and over. She says she has a mild case of Tourette’s—mild case—that causes a word to bounce around in her head until she says it out loud.

Anyways I wanted to pop on here to make a promise that I will be paying sacred attention to everything on this trip. Last time we traveled to Canada together, we were in a van that towed a little trailer behind it. We had our Barbies, our stuffies, and a cassette tape recorder to keep us entertained.

By the time this hits your inbox, the trip will be half-over, and now typing that already has me grieving the end. Damn I wish we could make life stop during the good parts. I’ll try to make it stop during the good parts.