Back to Normal

I love going on vacation, but coming home from vacation can be deadly.

First, when you get home, the house is so thickly coated in pet fur that your anal retentive self refuses to unload the suitcases until everything has been vacuumed. Then, you keep finding spots where your pets revenge-peed and spite-barfed. Then your loving husband recognizes that your brain is about to explode and has to bribe you back to sanity with promises of guacamole.

Guacamole works every time.

Once the piles of laundry have been tackled and the suitcases man-handled back under the stairs, there's still the return to normalcy that must be accomplished. Everyone is tired and whiney from two weeks of non-stop fun, and the grocery shopping has to be done. Add to that the fact that Tennessee was cool and refreshing, while Texas has suddenly become hot, muggy, and mosquito infested, and suddenly Mommy is growling and grouchy.

Let us not continue speaking of ourselves in the third person. Or with the royal We. Obviously, I already need more guacamole.

Regardless, we are getting back to normal, although that normal is now in the middle of summer break which makes it a little less normal than, well, normal. So tonight, as I set out my running clothes for tomorrow's first run back and get back to blogging, I am celebrating the last two weeks with all their fun and family but also celebrating normal.

There is joy in being home, even if coming home means vacuum cleaners and grocery lists and multiple loads of laundry. Because home also means normal, and normal means ordering a new white noise machine since you left your old one at a hotel somewhere along the way and would, at some point, like to stop using your cell phone as a very expensive substitute. And normal can be really nice sometimes. Even if potentially deadly.

{I know you've probably seen all these pictures already but they make my heart happy so I included them anyway. This is low budget blogging. You're welcome.}

{If you have called or texted me in the last two weeks and I haven't responded, it's because of the white noise machine/cell phone situation. And because when the twins are awake, I can't hear anything you're saying on the phone anyway.}