sick days/vacation days

I was sick this week. Every time I swallowed it felt like I was trying to choke down an apple whole. I finally went to the doctor. I started taking amoxicillin and a mad decongestant. Now I’m well. But I find I miss being sick.
I was off the hook for a while. I sat in front of the tv and watched nonsense shows that I’ve never seen before and could hardly follow--so I’d flip back and forth between a couple of them. I don’t even know what they were. What’s on network TV Monday nights?
I went to bed at 9:30. I asked Paul to cook dinner. He put the kids to bed. On Monday morning he got up and got them breakfast and made their lunches! I slept until 8:45. Once I started the decongestant I was a little loopy--tired and then wired. So I woke up at 3:00 am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I went and surfed the web and then listened to a book on my mp3 player until I fell back asleep. The next day I just napped.
Except for the feeling crappy bit, it was pretty nice. It was like a vacation.
In the summer of 05 my friend Angela and I went to the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. The year before Paul and I had gone with the kids. But in 05 Paul had used his vacation days elsewhere and we didn’t have the money for us all to go anyway. So I went with my girlfriend. It was fantastic. We listened to great music. Dipped in the ice cold creek instead of waiting in line for the showers. We listened to great music. We stayed up late sitting around campsites playing music and listening to some of the people we had watched on stage earlier, only unplugged and under a tarp at 2:00 in the morning. We walked to the coffee shop in town each morning. We started taking turns buying rounds with other Nebraskans who we shared our blankets and sat with at about 2pm. We heard Kasey Chambers and Patti Griffin and Peter Mayer and The Mammals and…. on and on. It was a fantastic four days.
That was the last time I went away by myself.
Paul sometimes goes on birding trips. He’ll hear that there is a rare owl in South Dakota and he’ll drive up, spend the “night” in a hotel, get up at some awful hour and look for the bird. He’s usually gone for 24-48 hours. I think it’s a bit nutty, but he loves it and I’m glad for him to get out there and do what he enjoys. Goodness knows he works hard enough.
But, so do I, right? And Paul would be more than accommodating if I wanted to get away…but where am I going to go? I’d love to go to some music-related event (a festival, a songwriting workshop, whathaveyou) but those cost money and are far away. Most things are far away from Nebraska. I find it hard to justify spending that kind of money (if I could find that kind of money) just to get away. Sometimes I think I should go visit a friend for the weekend--but again, who is driving distance from NE? And who would I visit that wouldn’t be saddened not to see the kiddos? And Paul?
I just answered a questionnaire on Melanie & Norma’s website that asked “If time could be stopped and everyone was frozen except you, what would you do and how much time would you need?” I answered “I'd go someplace beautiful--maybe drive to the mountains, maybe go camp out in a museum--and just hang out and play guitar and write songs and crochet until I was ready to start the world back up again.” But really, I don’t need time to stop to do that, do I? I just need to suck it up, make a plan and find a friend with a cabin in the woods…