So I mentioned the other day that we are on vacation. Specifically, we are visiting family in Central Oregon. This will be the longest visit we have ever made here.

In the past, we’ve come up for two or three days at a time. This time we made it a ten day jaunt; and let me tell you guys…on Day 7 I’m ready to go home.

There is no such thing as a “vacation” for mothers.

Sorry, but there isn’t.

Anyone that tells you she has small children and was able to go on vacation with said children and actually came back feeling relaxed is a fucking liar.

I’ve still been doing laundry. I’ve still been ref’ing the fights. I’ve still had to cook and clean and administer medicine and answer “can I have a snack” thirty to fifty times a day and tuck in and bathe and homeschool. And then there was that whole incident when I learned that they had not packed appropriate clothing for the weather.

It sounds cliche, but by the time we get home Sunday night I’m going to need a vacation from my vacation.

My husband caused some major shade to be thrown my way by his family.

The first three nights we were here, we stayed at his grandparent’s home. But when it was getting to the point where he had to fly home for work and a job interview, he realized that the arrangements there were not going to work for the whole ten days.

Besides their bedroom, they have a very uncomfortable couch, a double sized bed in a tiny extra bedroom, and a whole lot of hardwood floors. Beyond that, they go to bed around 8 o’clock every night, and get up around 6 o’clock every morning. So from the time they go to bed until the time we go to bed, we’re desperately trying to keep everyone quiet. And then first thing in the morning we’re woken up with their chores, their music, their breakfast, and their bickering.

For a few days, we could all cram into that space and deal with it. But for ten days? It’s not very realistic, especially with the dog sleeping halfway up my asshole all night long and the children getting more and more difficult by the day from having been woken up so early every morning.

So my husband drove down the street to the first nice hotel, and checked us in for the remainder of the trip. He then flew home for the whole work and interview thing I mentioned before; then tomorrow he’ll fly back and enjoy the comfortable beds in the hotel room as we have all week.

In response, since he flew home, I have gotten some major shade from his grandparents over the issue. They don’t think it’s right that when you stay in the same town as family that you would stay in a hotel. They think we should all just deal with being uncomfortable, and that it’s not a big deal to have to get up early every morning for 10 days.

They’re old; they’re set in their ways – I get it! But that didn’t make the flack I’m catching daily any easier to take. Tonight his grandmother yelled at me that when he gets back tomorrow night, I should let him sleep on the bed alone and sleep on the floor to give him space to rest. Because he works so hard.

FUCK THAT is about all I have to say to that one.

There isn’t a lot to do here.

We’ve shopped. We’ve eaten. We’ve shopped and eaten more. We went to the lone, local museum. Then we shopped and ate again.

Now everyone’s bored. Today I knitted an entire scarf. Yesterday I did an entire scratchboard drawing (that typically takes around 12 hours to do).

And the children are going stir crazy. If they have to do one more puzzle to keep busy, I may have to coax them down off a ledge.

We’re city folk. How terribly hillbilly and rednecked for me to say that, but it’s damned true. Of course we enjoy the peace and the quiet. The vegging out on the couch eating loads of Italian food while Clark Gable movies play in the background.

But we can only take so much. We’re getting antsy and bored. We’re ready for our regular lives to resume.

You know, there was once a day when I would have loved to go on a vacation and never come back. I could live on hotel food and in different rooms weekly without batting an eyelash. I guess as I get older, though, I have become more of a homebody. As if what came shuffling through the front door along with my 30s was a sense of stay-put-edness. Or maybe I’m just on burn out with the visiting family thing – I need a vacation to somewhere exotic where I know no one, and can therefore be entirely myself.

Whatever the case may be, our daily routine of tennis-school-tennis-school-laundry-clean-laundry-cook never seemed so attractive.