A Vacation at Long Last... Oops.

We went on a Real Vacation for the first time in... I don't even know. It lasted, oh, about two hours. Fun times.

We left June 16 (that's last month now) to visit Antonio's uncle in Albuquerque and then drive further north to our regional Quaker yearly meeting (our first time going) at Ghost Ranch, just past Abiquiu (it was georgia o'keefe's estate). What a spectacular drive, and we'd just finished dinner and were starting to meet cool people (Quakers are very liberal Christians), and Lazarus was already making friends, and then we got a message to call Antonio's uncle, who only knew where we were because we'd taken the time to visit...

Turns out Antonio's father had died and they found him on Thursday -- if we hadn't stopped to stay with the uncle (who's on the other side of the family, but somehow news got round to him), no one would have known where we were, and. Well. That would have been "bad." So we broke off our socializing, ran back to the room we'd just set up, packed it all back up, and got back in the car at 8:30 p.m. to drive north to Denver. I took the mountain shift (deer and elk really do leap out randomly in front of moving cars). Antonio took over once we hit I-25, and we got to Denver around 2:30 a.m. I did mention to Antonio that I'd like to stay in a hotel instead of crashing at a relative's house, and he agreed, so at least we got a few hours' good sleep.

Apparently, his dad had a heart attack or a roving blood clot and died immediately, which I guess is for the best because Chuck always said loudly that if he ended up in a hospital he'd pull out the damn tubes and be a pain in everyone's ass so they'd just let him go. Antonio is kind of stunned (they've always had a turbulent relationship, so the feelings are both intense and mixed), and I'm sad, especially that the kids won't remember him at all and he didn't get to see them this summer. Lazarus sort of seems to understand what "died" meant, since kitty Georgia and dog Chica both died recently, but he and Maggie were both -- how shall we say -- out of sorts, being away from the comforts and routine of home for so long. We had a lot of stuff to take care of and a lot of time to wait, to think, to miss home, to plot an early escape (that was me after the first week).... It was, of course, anything but a vacation, which is selfish of me to feel and write but DAMN it has been a long three weeks.

Home: a ten-hour drive on a cracked tailbone (I slipped down some stairs while cleaning Chuck's house), with a three-year-old screaming out three weeks' of pent-up frustration and a one-year-old feverish with strep throat, in a car that threatened to overheat if I dared to drive over 65 with the air conditioning on, packed to the roof with crap we don't need but didn't know what else to do with (Antonio drove a truck loaded with the rest of said crap). Home: running on fumes between Belen and Socorro because the power was out at the lone outpost along those 40 miles, and thank God for 32 miles per gallon and a sudden tailwind. Home: to a refrigerator full of food that would have lasted just fine over our four-day vacation but -- yeecchh, and to houseplants that actually survived three weeks of drought (8 of 12 made it, anyway), and to gardens that mostly survived thanks to the drip system I'd just finished (just a few plants drowned or seared because I hadn't yet figured out their adjustable emitters), and to a dog who bounded over the fence and leapt onto the car dancing her happy-dog dance when she saw us pull up.

There's no place like home.