Do You Always Think You Should Be Somewhere Else?

We’re on our family summer trip where we better MAKE MEMORIES, dammit!

We’re “doing” the California coast. We’ve hit Santa Barbara, in El Capitan and are currently in Monterey on our way to San Francisco!

All they care about are the hotel swimming pools!

Today we drove the 17-mile scenic drive down Pebble Beach.  

Clare (10) said, “If only Lukas (her best friend) were here, it would be so much more fun.”

Bridget (8) said, “let’s go back to the hotel pool!,”

I was thinking, “I’ve got to start on the 30th high school reunion. Why the hell did I let my sister nominate me for senior class president? It was your vanity, you Ass! You’re damned VANITTTYYYYYY!”

Henry said nothing. He is a man.

What we think they feel, they do not feel. What we think they think we feel, they do not think or feel.

So who knows if he was preoccupied or absolutely living in the moment.

Who knows what the hell was going on with that cryptic bastard!

There were a lot of people riding their bikes along the 17-mile Pebble Beach scenic route as we trolled by in our minivan eating monkey brains and reading Mad magazines.

I looked at the cyclists with their taut calf muscles and clingy biking shorts and felt guilty I’d eaten a short-stack of banana pancakes just this morning, and wasn’t forcing my family to ride bicycles up the coast and sleep in pup tents affixed upon seagull-guano-splashed crustaceous rocks in the Pacific Northwest.

Instead, we’re staying at a Hyatt hotel, poisoning ourselves in the hyper-chlorinated pool whilst ordering Michelle Obama healthy kids’ meals through room service.

If I stop, for a moment, thinking I should probably be doing things differently i.e. better.

Here are the Moments I loved Today

The aforementioned banana pancakes at an old Victorian restaurant in Pacific Grove.
Our girls nimbly traversing the rocks reminding us we should be studied by gerontologists.
Admiring the Tomboy Mermaid.
Looking at a bunch of dead people’s stuff in antique stores. Henry, Clare and Bridget were in heaven.  Billy Bob Thornton and I were trembling in abject terror.
Deer in our headlights. I wanted to pet them, but Henry, Clare and Bridget shrieked, “What about deer tics? Are you mad woman?”

Do you always feel like you should be somewhere else? What do you do to combat this and live in the moment?

16 thoughts on “Do You Always Think You Should Be Somewhere Else?”

  1. Rosie Carrillo

    Love vicariously “sharing” your family adventure! When you reach my age, & happen upon these photos, you will love it more than today! I have been tearing up, finding pics of my kids, when they were clambering over coastal rocks, & playing with a garter snake at Brice Canyon! ENJOY! 😀

  2. I love doing the California coast! Have a great time! We saw those same deer in Pacific Grove when we were there a few years ago, searching out the California Missions for our 4th grader. My kids still remember the deer and the Monterey Bay Aquarium and I still remember the fantastic dinner we had in Pacific Grive at the Fish Wife restaurant – soooo, I’ll bet you’re making memories and you don’t even know it. Have fun!

  3. Yvonne Condes

    Ha! Last week we slept in tents and hiked until we could hike no more and at the end of the day I was wishing we were in a hotel with a pool and a shower. Be glad that your adventure has indoor plumbing!

  4. What a great post. I really can’t wait to take that ride. I think about doing it every year and just never get around to it!

  5. I am really lucky and work in San Francisco. If you need any ideas about what to see when you are here, let me know. Have a really great trip!

  6. What a great trip. Nothing better than a stack of books and a lounge chair next to the pool. But, yeah, it’d be nice if the kids thought natural beauty counted, too.

  7. What a fun trip. Banana pancakes and the chance to look at dead people’s stuff. I would have pet the deers with tics anyway! Enjoy the rest of your trip!

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