Wednesday, January 3

Permanent Vacation

We're back. We survived. I have a sore throat and the everyday life is starting to creep back in; Pie is sleeping the sleep of, well, okay, she's not sleeping; Doodles is oversugared, overexhausted, and overwhelmed; and Adam is already immersed back in work.

Everytime we go back to Miami Beach, I think, "Why don't we live here?" Our yearly New Year's trip, complete with baby-friendly New Year's Eve party at my cousins' house, is always the worst because back home is dreary and gray. A Miami Beach? Miami Beach is naked children. Ice cream. Playground weather in winter. Family babysitters. Cousins and friends who like to drink. Captains that will boat us around the bay. Stone crabs.

But then reality sets in. We can't afford the kind of house I grew up in and we'd end up living in a tiny hovel in a great school district or a lovely spacious house in a school district I couldn't send my kids to. Ice cream is fattening. Naked children get sunburns. Stone crabs can make me sick if I eat too many of them.

And, of course, most of our fun we is with my buddies. My high school friend Rachel (all though that's misleading--we were definitely not what one could call "friends" in high school, but she is currently a very good friend and I originally knew her in high school. Makes complete sense, right?) and her two kids who are each almost exactly six months younger than Doodles and Pie respectively (let's call them T. Rex and Pad here). My buddy Tina has a wee little nine-month-old daughter (Elfin Girl) who is no longer at an office job and available for fun. My cousin-in-law is a hoot and can always be counted on to be the punch line of a joke. But Rachel now lives all the way over in "Frinsisisco" (which is sort of how T. Rex would say it) and Tina lives just far enough north that last-minute visits to the park would be unlikely and Jennifer (the CIL) has two nearly grown children with busy schedules and apparently she has to appease their whims before she appeases mine.

So moving back to the Beach really isn't feasible. But sitting here now, with bags to unpack, a dreaded 4 a.m. wake-up call ahead of us, and absolutely no plans for a dreary day tomorrow, I just want to go back.

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