That crash that accompanies the end of a vacation...

Our week in Bar Harbor is over. It was a glorious week of vacation, in which I spent too much, ate too much, and drank too much. And it's over. O. VER. Clearly, I am not handling that too well...

I won't offer a play-by-play account of the entire week because I don't want to lose the few readers that I do have. Incidentally, to those of you who are still sticking around, even though I average less than one post per week according to my Google Reader, THANK YOU!!!! It makes blogging a little more worthwhile to know that someone out there is actually reading this. And with that, here's the highlights...

Second paragraph I ended with an ellipsis...overkill?

My parents, my grandmother, and I set out last Saturday for Kittery and Freeport to do some shopping. Bill had a wedding to attend that day, so he drove up to Bar Harbor and met us on Sunday. While in these two outlet towns, I spent lots of money at the Eddie Bauer and Crate and Barrel outlets, as well as the big, huge, lovely main LL Bean store, located in Freeport. I could move in there, I love it so much. It was convenient that I had worked so much overtime over the summer because I acted like a woman who did not live in a country with an iffy (at best, I know) economy. And there were many, many other people in both towns doing exactly the same thing...to the point of being shocking, really. Ah, the adrenaline rush that accompanies some good shopping. Hopefully, the memory of it will keep me going for a while.

Our week in Bar Harbor included a kick-ass room at the Bar Harbor Inn, dinner out every night (including two nights that I ate whole lobsters, which I love, and two nights that I watched Bill eat whole lobsters, which made me wish that I could video it and post it on YouTube because he enjoyed himself that much with it). It also included ice cream on four different occasions (three occasions of my favorite butter crunch ice cream - with homemade butter crunch in it - from Ben and Bill's Chocolate Emporium and one occasion of some awesome blueberry soft ice cream that you could see had actual blueberries in it). I read four books (The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks, Just Breathe by Susan Wiggs, Sweet Life by Mia King, and The Art of Keeping Secrets by Patti Callahan Henry - all awesome books that I would recommend in a heartbeat). I did about 75 Sudoku puzzles. I went on a whale watch with my dad and Bill and saw three humpback whales and one right whale (and there are estimated to be only 400 right whales left in the wild IN THE WHOLE WORLD, so this was an awesome experience - the whale researcher who served as our guide was downright giddy about it). I toured Acadia National Park and found a sand dollar the size of my pinkie nail on Sand Beach. I went to some cemetaries that hold the graves of my great-grandmother's (and therefore my) ancestors who once lived on Mt. Desert Island. I drank a whiskey sour almost every night we were there. I took over 200 pictures that were keepers (and even more that I deleted immediately after taking them). And I managed not to kill my husband in the midst of the 160-mile tantrum he threw as we drove "the long way" home down Route 1 along the coast of Maine, as he wanted to be on I-95 instead. All in all, I would call it a big success.

Of course, now I am home. And I am feeling a little low about it. For a while now, I have been having some vaguely uneasy feelings about the upcoming winter. I think of what winter was for us last year (awful, awful, and awful, beginning with an ice storm in the late fall that kept me stranded at my parents' house for a week with my then-18-month-old dog and ending with snow storms that just kept coming), and anticipating what will probably be this year sends me right into anxiety overdrive. I am not someone who enjoys living out here in the middle of nowhere, where I sometimes have to rough it a little. However, as a result of Life Decisions, that is exactly where I am, and I hate it sometimes. And this hate is a little more on-the-surface for me right now because my vacation just ended and the temperatures dipped into the thirties last night.

Now that vacation is over, I also have to face the reality that I owe my parents a bit over FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS, and any relaxation that I thought I would find in cutting back my hours this winter is no longer a reality because I have signed on for another bonus contract at the hospital and will be sucking up the overtime in an effort to get ahead a little. The trick, however, is that I will never get ahead because things keep coming up that have to be paid for. First, we had our income taxes. Then the car issues. Next come our school taxes. And the holidays. And when all that is over? Here come those income taxes again! I shudder to think what will happen if something really big goes wrong. Being a homeowner is scary stuff...especially when you are a homeowner without much of a cushion to break your fall. And once all that is taken care of, there is still other debt like credit cards and school loans to worry about. I will say this...going to nursing school is the best thing I ever did. I have not ever had a career when I could work as often as I wanted and get paid for every minute of it...and I know that I am very fortunate to have this now. And to actually enjoy that career? A huge bonus...at least I don't dread going to work every night. I don't know what I would do if that were the care.

Whew! That was a total brain purge. If you are still reading, I say again THANK YOU! Sometimes the good people of the internet are the ones who are really keeping me sane...