Bikinis and Belly Aching.

Later this week, on Thursday, Rebecca goes on holiday. She is off to Turkey with her boyfriend and his family for a couple of weeks. So the house is filling up with the tell-tale signs of an impending journey abroad. Summer clothes hang freshly ironed around the house, bikini shopping has happened, and excitement levels grow. None of that of course applies to me, aside from the bikini shopping. You can never have too many of those.

The horrific realisation that we are actually not going to have a holiday this year has hit Louise and I like the proverbial tonne of bricks. I’m sure Emily is feeling it too. I know this as she keeps shoving videos and photos of the new stuff at Disney and Universal under my nose and demanding to know why we aren’t going! She of course should be going anyway, once her date comes through for her programme, and she is also distracted with her recently acquired new boyfriend. Joe is his name, and he of course will never be good enough for her. That is nothing against Joe. I’ve met him, he’s nice, but that statement about not being good enough applies to every male drawing breath on the planet so he shouldn’t take offence.

So there is a fairly high level of sulkage going on in our house at the moment. At work, the holiday season has started, and for the next four of five weeks, somebody from my team is away somewhere nice, and I am not. I am wishing them lovely times through gritted teeth.

For me, endless weeks of work stretch out like untouched very monotonous snow. That Groundhog Day, hamster on the wheel feeling is hard to escape. Sure, I’ll have some time off, probably in August to coincide with Louise’s holidays from University, but it just won’t be the same. Not being at work is nice of course, and I’d rather be at home than working, but there’s a real sense of bereavement at the loss of our annual injection of fun, luxury and incredible amounts of food.

Now, I am fully aware that in the grand scheme of things, these are not real problems. God forbid that we actually have something serious to deal with, but it does little to lessen the blow. There is always someone better and worse off than yourself, and whilst recognising that, I reserve the right to have a massive cob on until I have a new countdown to gloat over.

In slightly more upbeat news, Emily took delivery of her shiny new laptop this week. She has long coveted and craved a Macbook, and having been working for some months now, she has saved enough to get herself one. I have to admit that it is a thing of beauty. One thing it has finally enabled us to do is to start the long process of uploading and editing over ten years worth of Florida videos. We tried a little while ago, using my brother’s Mac, but came upon some technical issues and Emily gave up. After some tricky research regarding the required cableage to connect our aged camcorder to this brand new piece of technology, we ordered the doings we needed and yesterday started to upload the first lot.

For some reason 2008 was the first one uploaded, mainly as that was the one in the camcorder at the time. This was the year we went for Emily’s birthday. I think she turned 14. She’s 19 in two weeks time! I think the tapes go back to 2004, so this all might take some time, but finally, finally, we hope to get them all edited down and up onto YouTube sooner rather than later. Hey, this could enable you all to buy the trip report books and then indulge in a multi-media extravaganza by watching the relevant videos too. It’s like we are living in the future! Having watched 2008 last night as it uploaded the main thing that struck me was just how uncomfortable we, no I, am on camera, how much the girls have changed and how much my Dad loves being on camera.

It also made me realise how much I miss Vero Beach. We have had some of our loveliest and best times there over the years. It is a special place, nestled close to lots of other special places…to us anyway.

So I am very aware that this post has sounded full of self-pity. That is because it is full of self-pity. There will come a time when we return to our true home, and when I do, you will be praying for posts like these when I bleat a bit about not going, as the amount of gloating, over planning and smug countdowning I shall be doing will be more unbearable than what you have just read. No, believe me it will, no matter how unlikely you may think that is.

I’m off now to ready myself for another joyous week at work.

Till the next time……