Vacation Hangover

Anyone who has been out for a night on the town with friends and cohorts knows what a hangover is because at one time or another almost everyone has had one. We don’t think about it at the time when it is possible to slow our drinking down and avoid the day after feeling of welcoming death. No, we can handle our alcohol at that moment and our sense of self-assuredness, as misguided as it is, keeps us ordering round after round until we know it’s too late, but don’t really care. We’re tough. We can handle it. At least, that is how the drunken pep talk goes until we wake in the morning and realize what a giant baby we are and want someone to shoot us. We suffer the pounding headache that screams even as the wind blows too loud and our stomach is on a permanent roller coaster. We are tired and suddenly our body does not want to move from wherever it collapsed the night before. The sun melts our eyes as well as our brains and our mouths feel as if we swallowed an entire cotton field. We swear we will never drink again and we stick to that promise–until later that night, that is.

Vacations come with their own hangover of sorts. I actually never thought of it that way, but a friend said he was suffering from it after our visit to Savannah and the way I felt the Monday we were back, I understood exactly what he meant. I didn’t have a headache and my stomach seemed fine, but I was drained from all energy and just collapsed on the couch and refused to move. I did manage to write the Monday blog and even posted it, but that was as far as my work day went. I opened my Kindle and read and then napped and then read some more. I did manage to eat and drink a pot of coffee, but neither provided the energy that was required to motivate me into some semblance of productivity. I just wanted life to go one around me and leave me alone until I was rested enough to change out of the clothes I had fallen asleep in.

Vacations are great and the girls and I take trips as often as we can. We have one planned every month for the next four months as a matter of fact and have already been on two this year so far. It does not take much to convince us to load up the van and hit the interstate. Our vacations are not, however, periods of rejuvenation and rest. We actually come back more tired than when we left and it’s all because we want to get as much out of our vacation as possible, That’s why we usually leave earlier than planned and stay later than we should. Take this last trip, for instance. We were on the road at 7:15 Thursday morning, knowing that our rental would not be available until four that afternoon and it was only a four hour drive. Then, at the end of the vacation when everyone else had already hit the road for home, we stayed another five hours touring some of the sights we had not seen the three days we had been walking around. We just want to cram as much in as we can.

Because of that we wind up wearing ourselves down so that when we do arrive home we are too pooped to pop anymore. We just want to crash and sleep in our own bed for days upon days. We don’t think of work and we barely consider grocery shopping, which we should have done before we left. We are all dragging and need another week off to recover. Every time we venture out we swear we’ll be smarter, but it never works. There is just so much to see, to experience, and we really do not know when we will venture that way again. We’re afraid of missing something.

So, the day after our trip, I suffered a vacation hangover. I lounged around, barely moving, wanting to spend the day with my eyes closed. I felt like I was a giant mass of jelly. I know better though. I won’t do this to myself next time. I swear.

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