The same comfort found in the familiar can very easily breed disappointment - even resentment and anxiety. There’s just something about a fresh place with unfamiliar faces and no one knowing you secrets. Isn’t there? Life without a BlackBerry and a cell phone and God forbid, dare I say it? Without a computer.

I find phenomenal solace walking crowded city streets, surrounded by the exotic and the curious. Just as I find ease and rest sitting on the bank of a random river in a town whose name either escapes me or can’t be properly pronounced. Somewhere - anywhere - where my dreams, my fears, and my heart can not be exploited.

As a young woman, my father was continually having to remind me that “there’s no such thing as a geographical solution”.

I think he might have been wrong. Maybe just this once.

Perhaps the shift I’m craving is just a life intermission. It’s feasible a six month sabbatical would do the trick, and that I’d be content in a tree house in Fiji or a shack in Nepal or a hut in New Zeland if I had a decent laptop and high-speed access. Oh, I’m already slipping.

If you’ve called my cell in the last few days, you know I’ve decided to spend my two week “sanity break” largely in seclusion. I’m sure you’ll also be shocked to read that I have, in fact, turned off the CrackBerry. I know, I’ll allow you a moment to regroup.

I need to rest my mind, collect my priorities and identify some sort of organizational system for them so I don’t find them in a tangle at the bottom of my purse again.

Several books I’ve been *meaning* to read have made their way to a spot on the coffee table that’s full of promise. I’ll stretch my legs and ingest just as much air as my baby lungs will allow, take in the sunshine or the murky sky and whatever bits of the moon and daylight that either would care to show me.

As of this writing I’ve already watched 3 of the 5 movies I’ve been also *meaning* to see, run countless painful errands and moved Grover to a deluxe bowl so he has plenty of room to chase his blue, blue shadow.

In any case, I thank you all for understanding my need to invest time rekindling the love affair between my body, my mind and my soul.

I wish you all merry, memorable holidays and a completely brilliant and magical 2005.