Eight Things I Learned on an Empty Nester Vacation. #2 Get the Good Bread




We just got back from our first official empty nester vacation. Here's what I learned:

1. It is really quiet. Too quiet. It was just my husband and me in a rental house. There is nothing wrong with quiet, but if you're not used to it, it's a bit unsettling. I need to work on being OK with the quiet.

2. You can get the good bread. There's nothing better than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while hiking. But when we vacation with kids, we end up buying a loaf of white bread for the picky eaters. It was nice to get the good stuff this time. 


3. No one is getting queasy in the back seat. Lots of windy roads and we didn't have to stop once. 

4. You can hike to high vistas. Our daughter really doesn't like heights. At one point on a hike, my husband and I had the same thought: Mia wouldn't have liked this. But on our own, we got to enjoy a beautiful vista!


5. You can take detours. Usually we are rushing to get back home for school, or an activity, or a birthday party. With just the two of us, we were able to take a wonderful detour to Congaree National Park on the way home.

6. You can play strip poker. My husband's idea. I won:


(You didn't actually think that was going to be a video of us playing strip poker, did you?)

7. You can travel in the off season. We were able to travel after the summer season and before the popular fall foliage season. Lodging was extremely reasonable and there was no traffic. 

8. You're that cute older couple. You know how you've seen older couples enjoying each other's company and thought, I hope that's us someday? We saw that couple, then looked at ourselves and realized we are them! We're still coming to terms with that. 








Comments

  1. JanOctober 3, 2020 at 10:18 PM

    Yes, I was a bit afraid there was a video ... so I had to look �� Good things to keep in mind for next year ... ahhhh!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zoom, Zoom: The Midlife-Just-For-Me Car

Image
  Now that I am actually in midlife, I realize that " midlife crisis " is really not the right term. Whomever coined that probably wasn't in midlife yet. It was probably a 30-something who saw their 55-year-old mom decide to quit her job and go back to school to get a degree in an entirely different field. This may have looked like a crisis to the grown child, but Mom was probably happy as a lark.  I have gone through these changes of heart, too, but always found them to be positive adventures, never a "crisis" with its negative connotation. I did go back to school at age 52 to start my master's, which I will finish at age 56 (two classes to go!) It has been exciting and fun and fulfilling. No crisis here. So when I bought a two-seater convertible a year ago, I realized that this is what my younger self would have called a midlife crisis car. But now I know it is actually a midlife-just-for-me car. Shhhh, maybe we should still call it a midlife crisis car so...
Read more

A Ghost in the House

Image
           Image by DreamersNight   We feel like we have a ghost living with us. OK, it's only been three weeks since we dropped our one-and-only child, Mia, off for her freshman year of college. But I still find myself quickly turning off my alarm clock in the morning so it doesn't wake her up, or expecting her to burst through the door talking to me loudly at full speed without noticing that I'm on a work call. I also find myself wondering whether she is going to like the dinner I'm fixing tonight (probably not). My husband, Mark, watches out for her car when he's backing out of the driveway, forgetting it's not there, and has caught himself looking for her in her room.  We both expect to be awakened in the middle of the night when she very loudly gets up to go to the bathroom. I hope she has learned to be quieter for her roommates. In other words, the ghost of our daughter is still living with us. That idea of dropping off our kid at ...
Read more

Let's Become Empty Nesters in a Pandemic!

Image
"You sent your only child off to college in the middle of a pandemic?!"  This is one of the questions/comments/insinuated looks I've gotten from people in the past few weeks, as no doubt many of you with college kids have, too.  Those of us with kids in college, especially who have become new empty nesters in a pandemic, have a different perspective.  For one, we know that our kids are likely to be more protected on campus than running around their hometown. My daughter is smart and responsible, but she can be swayed by peer pressure to not wear a mask or social distance. At school, they are required to wear masks inside and out on campus, and she is living on campus where there are lots of restrictions due to COVID-19 (and frequent cleaning!)  Most classes are online, but the ones that are in person take many precautions (I would post a photo of my daughter in the ridiculously large "singing" mask that they are required to wear in her vocal class but I won'...
Read more