Day two... the plot thickens

I get up every morning, let the dog out, fix a latte, feed the dog, empty the dishwasher, take a dump, rinse out my sinuses, you know the usual stuff and then I sit down at the computer. I do it every day that I'm home and vertical. I call it cleaning the palate of my brain. It's more like winding up the old jewel movement in preparation for counting down the hours. You see the brain has become the only important part of the package on the downhill slide from fourty. So cleaning it out every morning is a must if you want the machinery to run correctly.

It is impossible to perform the morning ritual on the road. I try, but it breaks down after a day or two. Not the right kind of water, a latte from Starbucks just isn't the same, the dog doesn't travel and my system can never make up it's mind whether to withhold or give up everything to the porcelain god. I hate traveling. Don't get me wrong I'm not a housebound flower afraid to mix with the common folk. It's just, my body likes routine. And standing in the middle of Yosemite doesn't illicite the same kind of awe when one is constipated. It's part of the process of getting old. That's cool. I can deal with it. Excuse me while I go in the closet and scream.

You know the truth of it. And you either deal, or you make up stories about being 39, call a cosmetic surgeon, start wearing trendy clothes that make your kids giggle at you behind your back (or in front of it if your kids are like mine). In truth I like more things about being older than I liked about being young. I do miss the physical agility now and then. Especially when the arthritis acts up. But the up side is finacial security, self assurance, a sense of being together that I couldn't have imagined when I was twenty-five.

Until I travel. Then it all falls apart. There is nothing like a vacation to make me feel old. My body won't work right. I can't make it to the top (of whatever). The food is too rich, the beds are too hard, and pappa bear is grumpy. I'm two weeks back from nearly four on the road and I am just now feeling like my normal self again. You can bet that when we show round pictures of Hawaii I won't be adding the fact that I had a yeast infection in Maui. Nobody wants to deal with the reality of vacations. They want to see the pretty pictures, and at worst hear a short funny antidote about lost luggage or misdirections.

I guess my life after kids will not include extensive travel. It's just too hard on my delicate system and the return on investment doesn't match up with my expectations. Besides, my idea of fun is a couple of hours loose in Barnes & Nobel followed by a visit to Ben & Jerry's topped off with take out pizza and a couple of rented DVDs. Now that's heaven on earth. Who needs Hawaii.