all i ever wanted.

While the rest of the country is lamenting about a snow storm my Floridian blood can't quite comprehend the magnitude of, we're still being met with warm temperatures and the need to shield your eyes from unrelenting sun. The heat has felt both treacherous and refreshing against my skin on the walks Ethan and I have been taking outside, bits of fresh air mixed up with the scent of hot asphalt. There's something about being indoors I've decided I'd rather avoid these past days, something about the nagging of a suitcase taunting me with it's inability to pack itself, something about groceries and coolers and toys and laundry and just let me go outside, please, for an hour. Maybe two. Maybe just until it's time to put dinner on the table and get Ethan to sleep.

This house has left me bridled with feelings of anxiety, my own inability to get things done, my to-do list running too long until my own apathy cuts it off. I've spent the better half of today desperately craving a second latte and trying to fight back those overwhelmed tears while trying to figure out the logistics of everything. These moments happen where it all adds up. Where the laundry pile stops becoming funny and becomes my nemesis. Where each late night my husband's job makes him take seems to purposefully come at always the wrong time. Where oh my gosh, can I just have a vacation, please becomes my battle cry -- though as everyone with children knows, preparing and packing for a vacation hardly feels like a reprieve from life's stress.

But I'm trying. Trying to forget the fact the refrigerator is leaking again or that I spilled scalding water on my forearm or that this floor is so overdue for a vacuum but all I can muster the ability to do is flip through old CD's and upload music even I forgot existed. At least for me, productivity can be so put off by stress, by my daunting to do-list, by the fact I'm suddenly responsible for an entire family's needs and, strike one, I forgot to take Ethan in for a haircut.

But it's three or so hours until our vacation kicks in and I long for the lull of the highway under the tires and the air of a place that isn't quite as warm, a few days unplugged and away from everything but my family, good friends we never get to see quite enough and the thoughts about all that needs to be done at home. I have lollygagged through naptime by burning Ethan an ultimate Hanson-filled roadtrip mix for the car while the laundry pile sits and I'm fairly certain our suitcase is only 85% packed. I can -- and will -- own it until it's all just a distant thought, somewhere my vacation mind cannot touch.