So here we are…a long time later. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted for sure. I’m still juggling along. Doing so many things. Work, home, school, boys. Daily stuff. I guess what that really means is that I haven’t been a very good Queen of the Juggle! Finally, we are going on VACATION! Yay! After almost a year under our belt with the Jazz trailer, we figure we’ve got this stuff figured out. We thought we’d go see my sister in Central WA, friends in Eastern WA, and then back down to home. A long, long way on roads that we’ve never driven on before. The day before we were going to leave, Chip has an epiphany and looks at the numbers and says “hey, it’s gonna cost a lot for gas and how often do we want to hitch and unhitch”? I though “um, we just do”? Well, yeah, no. Then Chip brought up a fabulous idea of staying at tent camp locations and really roughing it. Because he has great ideas and yep, I’ve tent camped before, I totally bought in. Well, I didn’t really remember how easy my parents made it for me and how they made it look super easy.
Well, yeah, no. Not when you have 5 kids with you and a husband that has never done it. Not that I’m an expert, but having been the only one with camping experience, it was a little bit crazy to take on this idea. Gillian and I had camped when she was much younger as a brownie/girl scout. Somehow she didn’t remember much, which I thought was odd, because we had a really fun time. Well, we are preparing for our summer vaca, day one. As usual, the day job takes a lot out of me. Hubs for sure. He was crazy nuts about getting ready.
He’s so awesome, loaded up all of everything that we needed. Loaded it all into our minivan. Man, that had to be quite the job! Especially since this change of plan was sudden. Thinking we are taking the trailer our big truckand the Jazz trailer were already out at my mom’s in Winnemucca. That meant that we had to take all of the gear and 7 of us in our minivan. Whoa! That was an incredible juggle in itself. My husband, the best in the world, did all of the packing, toting and loading.
Then he began to prodding me… I was juggling as much as I could the day we left. My plan was to leave early, but that wasn’t to be. Since work is crazy to the last minute and has been for quite some time, which is beyond brutal for me. Juggling vacation prep and planning along with a full time job is ROUGH! Especially when you’re dealing with unhappy customers, who, I guess, don’t think you have feelings or that you are a human being just like they are. Since we have one person out on maternity leave, one leaving, an open position and me going on vacation, my team is stretched pretty thin. It’s really hard to look forward to vacation when the stress is so high and I know it is going to be a) ugly for those that are backing me up and b) ugly for me when I get back. Just thinking about it causes me angst and stress. Which is another reason I desperately need this vacation. I need distraction. My world of juggling is in a bad, bad, place. 10 hour days for months on end are not healthy. Chip finally forced me out of my chair and clutches of the work laptop to head out Winnemucca way. We arrived about 3 hours later than planned and then of course I had to do some more work. I managed to do some and then just finally quit.
We slept in the trailer and as I fell asleep I wondered if this tent camp, house surf vaca would work. We will see! Well, if nothing else it would be an adventure!
