REST is a 4 Letter Word

Finally. My vacation is here. Well, more accurately my vacation time is here, but I'm still at home.

At this point in my life, I should know you cannot please everyone and should first try to please yourself. But, I haven't yet learned this life lesson. And now this has caused me to lose two days of my precious, once a year beach week. The one week each year I get to go away and forget my work, surrounded my the entire clan in absolutely beautiful surroundings. What went wrong?

I tried to do the "right" thing.

Our travel plans were always to have my husband and I travel to the beach on Saturday. Our two kids are working at summer camp and don't finish until Sunday. They have a car at camp and would come on their own. No problem. But, my daughter (only licensed since February) totaled that car in a beltway accident on Tuesday when she was coming home on her day off from camp. (Praise the Lord she only scraped up her thumbs and walked away otherwise unharmed, but very shook up.) So in going over the options now available to get everyone to the beach, one solution was to have another camp counselor come along and that would provide our kids a ride. Before taking that liberty, I checked with my mid-80's in-laws to see if they wouldn't mind having this "stranger" come for a few days. To me, since my in-laws are paying for the house, this was the proper thing to do.

My in-laws response was it was no problem having the other counselor come along. But, they wanted my husband and I to drive our own kids. This was not a suggestion - this became a source of worry for them (witnessed by no less than 3 phone calls with corresponding lectures on how our children are our most precious things...).

In addition, we had now invited the other counselor to come. So, at age 50+, I am still being told what to do by parents and I have found myself in a frustrating situation because it's Sunday morning and I'm still at home - missing day 2 of my vacation. (I sound like a baby, but I only get 7 days at the beach a year and it takes 5 of them to truly relax, my math says I'm running out of time.)

So, why did this happen? Because I was taught to do the correct, proper, polite and courteous thing, especially when dealing with my elders. And, like it or not (NOT is where I am now), this was a very bad way to handle the situation. If I had not forewarned my in-laws about this change of plans, they would have been happy to see us show up at the beach on Saturday. They wouldn't have expected for our kids to arrive until Sunday. But, again it would have been wrong in my mind to have brought another person into the house without discussing it before hand.

The bottom line is this... others get away with doing what they want all the time. But, I don't because I follow rules that were handed down to me. And, these rules frequently screw things up for me. I could accept the disappointments that come from living by rules designed to make society work if everyone followed these same rules. Which, of course, they don't. Even within our family unit. In talking this out with my husband - also trained in these rules and frustrated by them - I guess it comes down to living by rules that were drilled into your head isn't going to change unless we make a conscious effort to change them.

We should have just said "no" to my husband's family, told them this was our concern and not theirs, and we'd be enjoying the beach now - instead of just finally packing the car. It's that simple, simple.

BTW - we are going to camp, picking up our kids, and leaving directions to the house with the other counselor. That's a f'd up solution, but it's all we've got now.