Home again, home again, jiggity-jig...

I spent last week in the Indian Rocks Beach are of Florida, visiting my grandmother with my mom and my sister. This was our big girls' week vacation before my sister headed off to Pittsburgh to attend business school at Carnegie Mellon University. We have been looking forward to this trip for a long, long time.

We set off on Sunday, after I checked and rechecked my suitcase eight million times, said an almost-tearful goodbye to Otto, and a less tearful goodbye to Bill. Although I did make the mistake of watching a couple of episodes of Air Emergency! during the past couple of weeks, I did not hyperventilate on the airplane, and our trip down was smooth. My grandmother met us at the airport, and vacation ensued.

Here's what we did during the week:

• went to the beach three times
• drank eight bottles of wine
• went out to lunch or dinner five times
• drank wine at lunch and dinner as well
• walked on the beach
• shopped at Target
• went to the movies to see Mamma Mia!
• shopped at John's Pass (a tacky-ish tourist attraction)
• ate Panera for breakfast
• read
• watched lots of reality television
• ate calamari at four of the five restaurants we visited
• went to the beach on our last night there to catch the sunset, which was breathtaking
  

Needless to say, it was a great time! I read seven books from the moment we got to the airport to catch our flight down to the time we arrived home. I got a bad sunburn on the first day on the beach and proceeded to make it a little bit worse every day. The movie was AWESOME, no matter what the reviewer in People says...it deserved more than 2 1/2 stars. I found a new wine I love...Sauvignon Blanc. It tends toward sweet like my beloved Riesling, but it is a little more drinkable all the time, while Riesling is sometimes a little too sweet. My sister and I spent a good amount of time walking, whether it was walking on the beach or walking down to the grocery store to get the makings for dinner and MORE WINE. I have to say that I love that they sell wine in the grocery store in Florida. And for so cheap! Here, we have to go to the state store to get our wine, and it can be expensive. They are spoiled like that in Florida!

And I arrived home last night, pretty happy to be here. I missed my dog like crazy (because of the fact that I am, you know, crazy), and I missed my husband too. I missed my bed because sleeping for a week on a pull-out trundle bed in a room that is heated up by the computer that is on all night right next to your head with pillows that are not your own can get a little old. And I even missed work a teeny little bit. I am actually looking forward to going in tonight to see what babies got well enough to go home while I was gone and whether we got any new ones to take their places. There was one baby I was worried about when I was leaving, and I am hoping that my return tonight finds him either home with his family or on his way home this week. And I missed my coworkers a little bit and can't wait to show off my tan!

Oh, and I have restarted Weight Watchers yet again because being the fat girl on the beach is a humbling experience. And Bill and I are talking about actually trying to get pregnant in the next few months (I asked if we could use August and September to get in shape and then start trying in October, and he was amenable to that), so I would like to lose some of this non-baby weight before I have to put on some baby weight. I don't know that I am 100% ready to have a baby, but I also know that we are not getting any younger, and in October, we will have been married two years, and it's never really the right time to have a baby, and I know I do want to be a mom. So after a nice discussion last night about just when this will fit into our lives, it seems like we will be trying that out sooner, rather than later.

Okay, I think that is my entire update for y'all. Check with me on Thursday, when I am once again sick of working and once again longing for the beach! Actually, I should be okay for a while. This is, after all, just where I should be...