Prepare for Launch!

Friends and followers, my husband and I returned from our marvelous child-free vacation (more on that later) to find an explosion of sorts had occurred in our absence.

I wrote last week about how we are getting ready to launch our twenty-year-old son, not into outer space (though don’t think that hasn’t seemed like an attractive option on more than one occasion in his twenty years), but out of our home and to another state.

So, we came home from our vacation to find he thought it prudent to pull most of his shit out of his room and scatter it around the house. There isn’t a room in this house–save the master bathroom, and even then I’m not one hundred percent sure–that doesn’t have some of his crap in it, waiting for him to decide if it pasts muster to get placed in a box or a bag to make the trek to Boise.

To be fair, he’s never moved before, at least, not in his recollection. We moved twice between his second and third birthdays–from the house we lived in when he was born, to temporary housing while they finished building this house, and then into this house when it was finished, which we bought with the intention of living in it forever.

Moving is one of those things, I think, you’re either really good at or really bad at, depending on your general organization level. Not to brag here, but both my husband and I are excellent movers. Just after we were married and bought our first house, we moved into it in a single morning, with the help of a handful of friends, one of whom claimed, “This is the most organized move I’ve ever seen.”

However, it seems as though our son is…not going to be a great mover. He will find it tedious and overwhelming, and it will play to most of his weaknesses while not allowing him to flex his strengths. That’s okay. We’re here to help him, if for no other reason than I don’t continue to trip over his shit.

About that vacation… It was fantastic, of course. We went on a short cruise, the same one we took on our honeymoon, after a wedding, but before a marriage, with all its attached accoutrements–mortgages and car payments and kids and day care and retirement funds. It may be telling that the second half of that honeymoon was spent at Disneyland (still my favorite place in the world to be). We were in our mid-twenties with an unfathomable lifetime of togetherness ahead. But first…Disneyland.

Since that first cruise (and it was our second lengthy vacation together), cruising has become our vacation of choice. This one had two port days and we didn’t get off the ship at either. (Aside: I loathe when someone refers to a cruise ship as a boat. It’s not a boat. The Love Boat wasn’t even a boat. It’s a ship. They’re all ships, for ship’s sake. End of aside.) My husband is recovering from a back injury, so a lot of walking was out of the question. So we stayed on board and still had a great time. We ate…too much. We watched a lot of stand-up comedy and listened to a lot of live music. We won four trivia games and were one square away from winning a blackout BINGO game (and its $1000 prize). I read a lot and we slept like rocks. All in all, a serviceable vacation.

We took our kids on their first cruise the week I graduated from law school. They were five (and had a broken arm) and eight and loved it. We’ve been on two others with them since. Next year, we are likely to go on our last family vacation (before they have their own families to vacation with) and they both want to cruise, so we’ll be going on another one soon.

This vacation, as I previously mentioned, we left the kids home, and returned to the house still standing (albeit with my son’s crap strewn all over the place), the kids and pets alive. Another parenting win.

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NaNoWriMo is a little more than a week away and prep is complete! I finished the last of the freezer-to-crockpot meals before we left on vacation, and now they’re stacked in our chest freezer, waiting to be cooked and eaten by a harried writer (that’s me!) and two-thirds of her family. My friends, not another thing will fit in that freezer. We’ll have to eat six of them before I can buy ice cream again. But it’s finished, and I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be to write fifty thousand words in thirty days. Wish me luck!