Teletubby

The Valentine's Day massacre was followed up by school vacation week from hell. I feel like every time I blink it's school vacation, blink again, someone is home sick, one more time and it's a snow day. The tall one can't make the effort to even speak after his exhausting days of sleeping until 1:00 p.m. "Who was on Fallon last night?" "People." Really? people, very informative, lovely conversing with you. The small one, my beloved, who has made such strides in the past few years in terms of coping mechanisms, has decided that homework assignments (especially for Spanish class), are the 10th circle of hell. I haven't seen him plunge head first, so fiercely into his misery cave in quite a long while, and I no longer seem to have the patience for it. I used to have endless patience and a constantly bleeding heart, currently, my nerves are frayed and I feel my heart hardening, which is alien to me and I don't like it.

We had two straight torturous days, from start to finish. Little boy is a drama queen and when he goes in the cave, it's just ugly and irrational and there's nothing I can do to help or make it better and I'm getting tired of everyone I live with taking their shit out on me. At one point, I just went up stairs, pulled the blankets over my head and went to sleep.

I tried to make myself feel better by googling all there is to know about diving off of Playa Del Carmen and Cozumel and discovered that February is Sea Lice season in Cozumel. Pesty little critters that bite you all over while you're in the water, charming.

I've never felt so in need of a break in my life. I mean, I'm the girl that lasted most of twenty years without a vacation, but now I'm spoiled. I am also lucky. I can't believe that when I most need to get away, I am indeed, getting away. In 48 hours I'll be sitting on a warm beach sipping a cold drink with a warm hand to hold, lifelong friends get to do that which is why everyone should have them. I can hardly believe it. Traveling often comes with anxiety for me, I really am a homebody, but I am just jumping out of my skin with the anticipation of a change of scenery. If I didn't know I'd be driving to the airport in a day and half, I think I'd be driving to the local mental hospital.

I went to the dive shop the other day to spend my birthday gift certificate and got all kinds of fun stuff. A dive mask with my prescription lenses in them, only $35 extra. I happened to have my Rx in my walled and they just pop in the corresponding lenses, wow weeeee! I got a cool mesh backpack to take all my stuff in, with a dry pocket, an essential luxury. I got lobstering gloves to make sure I follow through on my desire to be a bad ass, hunter gatherer this summer.

I've been telling the boys that if I keep picking up the same holiday gift cards from the floor and returning them to their owners with the instructions "this is valuable, put it in a safe place", I was going to confiscate them. So after returning several cards again and again over a couple of weeks, and I mean, again, and again, and again... I purchased myself a tropical weight wetsuit, and a mini Canon point and shoot camera because my phone camera is broken and I'm not buying a new phone and I might want to take a few snapshots in Mexico. A very enjoyable spending spree, I have no remorse. I also ordered some sea lice/jelly fish sting lotion.

My mostly black with a little bit of pink wetsuit came in the mail yesterday so I tried it on. Wetsuits are really hard to get on, it's not fun. I look like a Teletubby in mine, and I get that my big white thighs are not the most attractive, but when I went downstairs to prance about, those boys were not impressed "oh please, do you have to?" "Mom, stop it." They were finally in agreement about something, those guys are no fun these days, sheesh. So I went back upstairs to change and got promptly stuck in said wetsuit. I don't have grippy hands anymore and the zipper should be longer so you can kind of wiggle out, but I couldn't budge the arms, and had to go downstairs and ask for help, and more horrified looks.

Leaving the house at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday morning and not looking back. The question is... will I come home?