I’m astonished that we actually survived to this mini-vacation that’s been planned for months and always on the brink of being canceled.

For some incomprehensible reason, vacations are difficult for us to actually pull off as a couple. (But I kind of think that this might actually be mostly because of me.) Somehow, the day before departure, we always end up with a to-do list like this:

1. Do all the things.

2. Shit! Why did we do none of the things before now?

3. And why are they all the most important, time-sensitive things?

We are not so good at doing the things when we should do them. Instead, we’re like “What? That Thing? That Thing will be great to do tomorrow. Tomorrow is a very great day for doing That Thing.”

If you add up all those Tomorrows, they equal The Day Before Vacation. Always.

And then we’re in the car and we’re stressed out and we’re having a fight about the proper speed to drive a car (could it not possibly be the posted speed limit, I ask – nay, plead?) and we’re all VACATION SUCKS LET’S GO HOME AND LIVE OUR NORMAL, STUPID LIVES INSTEAD BECAUSE THAT’S BETTER THAN THIS GARBAGE.

But then we get to our vacation and we’re amazed that it’s nice and wonderful. Part of the reason it’s nice and wonderful is that we finally did all the stupid things that were cluttering up our to-do lists and making us miserable every day for months while we were avoiding them.

So the moral of the story is that we would be happier people if we did the things we were supposed to do – but would we appreciate our vacations as much? Or do we need the contrast of misery to really enjoy them?

The latter doesn’t seem like a good moral, so we’ll say it’s the former. Do I believe this with any conviction? Meh, yeah, sure.

Ta-ta, time to continue vacationing!