So long Shore, Hello home

Last night, we finally returned home from two weeks at the shore. I swear, I barely remembered what our real house looked like, and to be perfectly honest, for those two weeks, I sincerely did not care.

The shore was a "busy" vacation in the sense that taking kids to the beach everyday is actually a lot of work, and yet it was so relaxing to be away from everything, and to need so little to get through the day. Most of the time, I didn't need my car, my keys, my purse, my shoes;etc. I didn't feel constantly at odds with myself about how to best spend every minute of my day, and I only went to the grocery store one time on the whole vacation.

It was wonderful.

Today, on the other hand, I am back to reality. Being back to the blog, which may or may not qualify as reality, is for sure one of my favorite things about being home. Less exciting is to see that while I was away the laundry I left did not wash itself; bills and other mail continued to accumulate; and the refrigerator did not purge itself of spoiled dairy products.

My husband, who was home alone for the entire first week of our vacation told me he cleaned up the house and handled the mail. I'm not sure what the word clean means to him, but what he did, I can not call cleaning. He may have handled the mail in the sense that he touched it, but he did not return papers that were sent by school and were due back before today; nor did he open, respond to, or inform me of two invitations that we received while I was away, and he was still home- one, for a party that has already happened, the other for my cousins wedding, which hasn't happened, but for which a response was required on August 2. Granted, I think in the case of the wedding, more time should have been given to respond, but still...I was single-handedly managing five children at the beach, and he was?

Right- working, but only til five- which means that he had many nights all to himself. I'd even cut him some slack, but here is the thing. When he did arrive to vacation with us, he told me how rough his week had been. Naturally, I rolled my eyes and said, you have got be kidding me- but he protested my jest, standing firm on the grounds that he did so much at home while we were gone.

So today, I have been scurrying about like a mad woman. I am filling out forms due today, trying to return some of the seventy phone messages that I came home to, and throwing out old gogurt, and sighing loudly as I unpack and repack because three of the kids are going away with my FIL, until Friday, tomorrow morning.

And he keeps saying, "relax, there is really not that much to do."
Maybe he's right, maybe I've been spoiled by my beach bum lifestyle and now reality is too overwhelming, but when he told me this afternoon...
"I'm mowing the lawn and then I'm done, because tomorrow I have to go back to work"
...I had wonder where he thinks I'm going tomorrow- what he thinks I have to do tomorrow?
Why is it that a mother's work is never done, but a father can be finished after he mows the lawn? Because he has a job? If I don't have a job, how can my work never be done- if I don't have a job, why do I have work?
Maybe I have had too much sun.
Tomorrow, I will be back in business. Not sure what business that is, since I don't work, but if I find out, I'll be sure to let you know.