Vacation Envy

A co worker of mine is leaving for Florida today. In fact, she waltzed out of the office with that “see ya later suckers! I am OUT of here!” air about her. I love that feeling and do recall how wonderful it is to have worked as hard as she did to get things wrapped up, change your voice mail greeting and set up that out of office auto reply on your email. It’s a beautiful thing, that relief that what lies ahead of you is a week – or more if you’re fortunate – of fun. Okay, air travel or a road trip, especially with kids, might not always be fun, but it’s not work.




I’m green with vacation envy.



She’s taking her grandchildren to Disney World. She’s been planning this for some time and, as her office is next to mine, she’s been sharing her plans along the way. This summer she and her husband are going to Yellowstone National Park with some friends. Another co worker left yesterday for my beloved Riviera Maya. Last fall she was asking my opinion of different resorts and suggestions to places to go. Her son is the same age as my daughter. A friend of mine just returned from two weeks in South Carolina, visiting Myrtle Beach and Charleston.



I can hardly contain my seething jealousy.

Why are we not traveling? Okay, that’s a fair question, and a good one. In the past few years, we’ve been on at least two, usually three vacations a year, and done some extensive traveling instate, too. Starting with St. Maarten, then Orlando, and Virginia, then Mexico’s Riviera Maya and Ohio’s roller coaster capitol Cedar Point, then Tampa, another trip to Virginia, and another week in Mexico. We’ve been on the go for some time now. And it’s been wonderful. For a while there, it seemed that I would barely have put one trip behind us and the next was right there on the horizon. We were fortunate for that time to be able to do so. My husband and I are great at finding travel bargains and were able to make it work. We always had a trip to look forward to.

Back to the question of why we’re not traveling, perhaps I should clarify that we’re not traveling AS MUCH. We have a trip planned this coming July to go to Virginia again. Joe’s sister and her family live near Williamsburg and we love to visit them and enjoy the nearby attractions of Busch Gardens and Virginia Beach.

Not as many people are traveling because of the economy. Airfare bargains are not as easy to come by. Frequent flier programs are becoming more difficult to use. The costs of everything it seems has risen. For us personally, we have had some big changes over the past year or so that has impacted our financial situation. In the last year, we’ve purchased and fixed up our house, planned and executed a wedding (ours of course!), took my ex-husband to court to resolve child support and custody issues for my daughter, and said wonderful 10 year old daughter moved in with us full time.



These are all good things. Fewer vacations for us don’t equal unhappiness. I just get restless and feel that sense of “fernwah” or ache for distance. When I actually think about the reasons that we’ve not traveled as much lately, I can sit comfortably in the knowledge that my daughter’s coming home from school today, as she has everyday for the past year and a half. That home she’s coming to is our home, not the rented apartment we were in. This wedding ring on my hand, what it means to me and that man that comes with it makes up for the fact that I haven’t been crammed into an airline seat yet this year.



So, maybe tonight I’ll flip through the Budget Travel I just got, and sigh into the pages of Caribbean Travel & Life, but I’ll be squashed in next to my kid on the couch in my living room with my husband flipping the channels and my deadly sin of vacation envy will disappear into the contented evening.