We've Gone On Holiday By Mistake

Have you ever had that feeling that you were doomed? Not in a mortal sense, but in the sense that one wrong move will lead to a series of undesirable outcomes, somewhat like a domino effect. Well, this is sort of how it went when we moved our anniversary vacation so that I could be done with my project and not have it interfere with our trip or have me feeling like I couldn't relax. After that, it seemed as though everything would slowly unravel into a vacation from hell.

Our plans to go to Priest Lake with our friends collapsed due to our own stupid drama. Then their kids were exposed to chicken pox, and we thought we'd go to Portland instead because Uncle Dave would be back from Alaska and might have some days off from fishing in Astoria. That didn't pan out either, because bad weather was causing them to fish farther out, which makes their days very long... but I'm getting ahead of myself - that was lame, but not the reason our vacation went sour.

The day we arrived in Portland, Mel got sick. She was feverish, congested and exhausted. The next day I got it. Thankfully, Peru did NOT get it (probably because of mamma's milk). By midweek I was feeling better, but still congested - Mel never really got better the whole vacation. Because of illness, we didn't see much of our friends (we did see them, but briefly), didn't go out, and didn't really do anything at all. Plans for hikes, swimming the Sandy River, or catching a live show were all squashed.

If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why you did. Here is the payoff... we managed to have as good a time as possible. We ate at EaT, where I had a drink made with absinthe. Dave had one evening off and made a quick trip to see us. Our friends at Artemisia are weeks away from being parents, and it was exciting to see them before their world turns upside down. Justin and Greg made us ribs one night and also took me out for drinks on our last night in town.

The real redeemer was that I got to spend every day with my daughter and was present when she made her first crawl across Uncle Dave's living room floor. Now she is all over the place! She has really become a pretty fun kid and we've made lots of progress (Poppa doesn't deal with nearly as much crying as he did two months ago).

I'm thankful for the time I got, but it sure would have been nice to have had a full week, rather than just a couple of days. I think I'll just reboot and try another vacation before the year is up. Maybe it waits til Greg's Hawaii trip in January, but maybe I can get a few days before summer is over.