Well, the vacation is over. Dan goes to his first actual day of work tomorrow (first official day was today, but as it’s a government holiday here, he didn’t actually have to go in). I have mixed feelings about it. On the one had, it’s always hard to see a vacation end and get back into the daily groove of work. It’s more difficult here because I’m not in a place that I have set up to do my work easily — neither the place, or the stuff I have at my disposal is ideal (I don’t have any of my baby “stuff” — from changing tables to high chairs to swings to jumperoos to toys . . . even the fridge is tiny so I’ll have to go out to get lunch for B tomorrow). Also, it’ll be hard to say goodbye to Dan after 3 weeks off together. It’s been great to have his help, and just to have so much free time together.
On the other hand, though, we’re neither really saying goodbye to our vacation, nor are we getting “back” to anything . . . we’re living in our vacation destination permanently now, and, at least for the time being, we’re going to still be so far off what is normal for us that I don’t think it’s going to feel like getting back into our old routine yet (if ever). We also have the advantage that over the next week, Dan doesn’t have to strictly work his 8 hour days — he has flex time to come home, or run errands, or do whatever needs to be done towards setting things up here. We thought we’d have so much more of that done by now, but, other than apartment hunting, we just don’t. Now that he’s going to be at work, the paperwork should start moving, and that should allow us to get some things straightened out and taken care of . . . and it’s also going to get the money coming in, which is going to be a huge relief, because we had not been counting on having to live entirely off of our savings for the past 3 weeks for expenses both here and back at home. And, much as it’s been nice to have Dan around for the past 3 weeks . . . we also haven’t ever spent this much time “off” together, and we have started to get on each others nerves a bit. (Although I give us both a ton of credit for the fact that we’ve only really had 2 arguments since we got here, and given potential stress levels, that’s pretty impressive.)
All in all, I think I will really enjoy working towards getting my daily life organized and working for me again, but I will miss having Dan around (and I know that the kids will miss him, too). I’m going to miss “being on vacation”, but I think it will be nice to get ourselves a little more settled. And, the next time I take a vacation, I think I’ll arrange for it to be less work.