what I have learned

What I have learned on my vacation:

• It is really hard to type on a laptop with a 70-lb dog trying to sit in your lap. The friend we are staying with has a sweet big dog who thinks she's toy-sized. I love cuddling with her, especially because I miss our dogs so much, but she just caused my brilliant, witty, almost-finished post to disappear into the ether. So I have no wits left: you'll just have to be satisfied with bullet points.
• When you are as old as we are, you spend the first day of vacation being really, really tired. Not just from travelling, but as a kind of reaction to the weeks and months leading up to the trip.
• It's great to have time to just hang out with old friends. And newer ones too.
• Even though I haven't been blogging much in the past 2 weeks, I still spend a lot of time daily on the internet. It's been tough not having that opportunity -- two whole days offline was weird. Corollary lesson: downshifting to dial-up makes me grateful for my setup at home.
• I didn't bring much work--just the books I'm teaching next week. (And I have started reading & taking notes from those.) Being away from my work, from my routine, from the daily distractions is really an unusual experience. I can go for several days at home without working, but that's procrastination or slackness, not relaxation. This really feels different. I can already tell I'll be really glad to get back to work when I return Monday night. How do people go on vacation for a week or more? The best part is that I'm actually having good feelings and thoughts about my writing projects -- the important work that too often gets shifted aside by the pressures of teaching & urgent crap.
  
• I wish we could do more of this sort of thing. It's a real luxury.
• Our dogs are not doing well at the groovy boarding place out in the country. I talked to the owner last night and they have turned into digging escape artists. Especially our nervous younger dog. I'm worried about her. They have taken extra precautions to keep her contained and safe, which is the important thing. But she isn't having the fun time running around and playing with other dogs that we'd had in mind. She's a nervous little girl anyway-- and this is only the third time that we've boarded her, so maybe she doesn't understand that we are coming back. I talked to her and sent her mental pictures, but she gets overwrought when she's really scared.
• So if you balance good vacation and expense plus dog anxiety, I don't think it comes out on the side of many more trips in the near future. But I'm trying to squeeze what I can out of it.