The Human Resources Director Person returned to the Totem Pole Company this morning, after five glorious days in Hawaii ... looking tan and serene and bearing gifts for everybody in the office: postcards, dried fruit, candy, plumeria blossom soap.

I hate her.

(No I don't. I love her. She is one of the main reasons why I stay in this stoopid leaky canoe, long after a more sensible Executive Ass might have tucked her paddle under her arm and bailed. But it just galls me that someone can come back from vacation actually looking like they've been on vacation: I come home from one of our "vacations" to TicTac and I am immediately ready for a vacation to recover from my vacation. It's not fair.)

But that's OK. Give her another couple of days, and she'll look just like the rest of us: pasty, damp, overwhelmed ...

... and ready for a week in Hawaii.

      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

Now that the trip to TicTac (and all of the drama surrounding Daughter #1's high school graduation) are over, I do feel a general sense of life downshifting into a more comfortable gear again.  I am MORE than fine with that. My frazzled and exhausted head  --  not to mention my checking account, my upper respiratory system, my sex life, my fingernails, my half of the closet  --  could use a couple weeks of getting-back-to-normal.

Besides, it's only temporary ... until the NEXT round of insanity.

Next month the Tot Visits begin. First out of the chute: the brand-new high school graduate.  I made her flight arrangements this morning: she'll be spending a whole week with us in early August. Getting the other two Tots here to visit this summer is proving to be slightly more problematic, as I attempt to unplug them from busy social lives/work schedules/Play Station addictions. But I'm certain that the lure of airline peanuts and new shoes will eventually prove irresistible. Soon our days and nights are going to be filled up again, with shopping and sightseeing and photo opportunities and soggy bath towels and hauling assorted Tots back and forth from the airport.

I'm exhausted already, just thinking about it. 

But I'm also very excited. (Daughter #1 and I have some unfinished business with a certain cranky bumpersticker vendor in Berkeley, for one thing.) In the meantime, I plan to spend the next two or three weeks revelling in the mundane. Doing stuff with David. Sleeping as much as possible. Puttering around The Castle. Writing. Getting well. Getting caught up at work. Killing ants. Not killing Franz totally dead, each and every day.

Taking a lot of deep breaths, figuratively and literally.

It probably won't make for the world's most scintillating journal entries ... but maybe when it's all over, I'll actually look like I've been on a vacation.

Instead of looking like I need one.