Planning a vacation with a man who doesn’t fly is more of a challenge than you might think. Or not. Maybe it’s exactly the frustrating, heart wrenching, patience exhausting, hope inciting, dream dashing challenge you’re imagining.

He’s finally agreed to going somewhere via one of them thar big aireoplanes for what we’ll call our baby-moon (since approximately one year from now we’ll be breaking ground, then giving birth to a cabbage and will be sustaining ourselves on a steady diet of mac & cheese, ramen noodles and beanie-weenies until then) and when you’re traveling with someone who has seen exactly 2% of the world (anything in driving distance + the trips he took to Vegas and PA with his ex which I absolutely, positively do not bring up every time I get homesick) the options are no easier to wrap your brain around than the world being round. HOLY CRAP. IT’S ROUND? I’m pretty sure I owe someone $10 for that.

We’ve been talking about this for 9 months, easy; and we’re less than 4 weeks away from a damn well earned vacation thankyouverymuch and curse you [redacted], because I can’t talk about just how much I’ve earned this. We’re 4 weeks away and we’ve made zero progress in picking a location. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

I want turtles and a cheap flight (because that part is my responsibility and in my new found almost debt-freeness, I have palpitations delightfully paired with a pucker affliction when we start talking about my pocketbook), he wants exotic. I think. I don’t know, because I stop listening after I say “turtles” and “cheap flight”.

Turks & Cacois? BVI? Barbados? Bermuda? Bahamas?

We’ve picked up an embarrassing amount of travel magazines, we’re poking around on our adoptive mothers timeshare site (God bless her), we’re looking at LastMinute, I’ve been sporadically scouring TripAdvisor while inhaling lunch at my desk (and yes, I know the urban myth about it being dirtier than a toilet), which only proves that my ability to research is only outshone (?) by my ability to talk myself into a stupor. In my defense, the only correct answers to the vacation quandary are: home (Anchorage), Machu Picchu, the Galapagos, and Egypt. Maybe The Burren for a week by myself, maybe a tree house in Fiji.

Not only are we not any further along in our decision making than we were 9 months ago, we’re probably in a deficit. Also? I need to stop playing the ex card…right after I get his B.A. Baracus style medicated ass on a plane and take him home. I suck with a blow-dart gun, so that narrows our options. Again.

I’ll keep you posted.

Next Friday afternoon I’ll board a plane for Ireland and all I can think of – besides “omgwtf I haven’t even started packing” – is “omgwtf am I doing, I’m going to die. The Mc won’t even be with me and we’ll never get to build the cabin and I still haven’t gone swimming with turtles and who will give the boys mani-pedis and and…”

I blame him completely.

Apparently nearly 4 years of being with a man who gets hives at the mere mention of boarding a plane has turned me into a ragingly unstable, paranoid lunatic.

Never having thought of myself as an easily influenced person let alone a person easily influenced via the osmosis like transmission neurosis of her partner, I am disgusted. Disgusted, disheartened, confused, lost, disturbed, a little pale though reasonably well groomed, and oh, did I mention disgusted?

My mental bags are packed. The itinerary is set, passport and car rental and plane tickets all printed and waiting to be put into a yet to be determined piece of luggage. Am I avoiding packing because I’m inexplicably freaked out or because my tripod won’t fit in my wheely bag and I’m frustrated I’m going to have to go buy another one?

I’ve always adored travel! (see exhibits a b, c, etc.) Especially solo travel (though this trip won’t be solo it also won’t be with The Mc) and travel to far away beautiful places and omgwtf I’m bringing my camera with me this time and last time all I had was a half dozen shaksy disposables and it’s going to be awesome…so could someone please tell me what filthy bar toilet seat I picked these voices up from so I can go back and sue the cleaning service?

Did the plane landing on the Hudson and the chopper colliding with a small plane and countless others falling from the sky screw me up, or can I legitimately blame The Mc?

I ask because blaming him is easier to stomach than me just getting old and scared all by myself. I’m not capable of such heinousness.

So here I go, typing it all out hoping that talking about The Boogyman (capitalization is called for in a case such as his) will make him less real and keep my plane in the air.

Quick. Someone. Validate me!

What: The Hostel in the Forest
Where: Brunswick, GA
Price: $25/night pp, 3 night max.
Reservations: Don’t bother emailing or looking at their website just call. 912-264-9738
Amenities: Treehouses (!!!), labyrinth, outdoor showers, ducks, lake, natural pool, sweat lodge, roosters & chickens, quiet paths, fresh air, camp fires. Bring your musical instruments, there’s almost always an after sunset jam followed by a group swim in the lake.
Other: Composting sawdust toilets, only to be used for “deposits”. If you have a shy bladder/bowels, IBS, or body shame, this isn’t the place for you.
Likelihood of a return visit: 100%
Distance from Atlanta: Approx 304 miles
Time to visit: Mid to late summer when the skeeters are dying down but it’s still warm enough to sleep without blankets and skinny-dip.

Saturday

We lolled about after waking lateish and shuffled off for breakfast at a truck stop complete with Princess Phones (which, btw, was something I’ve always wanted to do) and plenty of coffee. Back to the hostel under threats of another MN hissy fit, we read and played mancala and cards until I think G & K’s heads were going to explode.

They went foraging for lunch while I poured a drink, opened the screen door to welcome the rain and launched bloom on my iPhone (which you should totally download RIGHT NOW. I’ll wait.)

It’s the most relaxed I’ve been in ages.

The sky booming and shaking, the splatter of the drops on the canopy of green, the quieting of the little buzzards trying to ruin my life, the air cooling and thrusting itself into my lungs, the green becoming so amplified it was electric…

I wanted to soak it all up and in and roll around in it so the stink on my skin would never leave and I’d have something more to remember it by.

I wanted to share it with you, but it slipped through my heart and evaporated. I don’t suppose it was meant to be shared, it was what the postcards are about…”wish you were here…” because my words and imagery will never do it justice.

The girls came back and fed me, and we resumed our reading/gabbing/joking.

Eventually, the dinner bell rang (what we can only assume was an hour before dinner) and we scurried down to the netted mess hall to play friendly with the other guests and the staff.

While our meal and the company were both delicious and delightful, it’s what came next that makes my heart melt. The sun fell, dusk settled, and the temperatures started to cool. It was our final night, and I wasn’t going to leave without swimming in the lake, and out to the hammock in the floating dock and floating at least a few minutes away under the stars…so I did.

There was a mist on the water from the temperature change that made it haunted and mystic and surreal. I wished for my camera and closed my eyes on the image. It’s still there, with the reeds around the banks of the lake and the bench swing where my clothes hung disappearing and reappearing in the light the nearly full moon provided.

Between the chatting and admiring the night there were long pauses of silence, where I could close my eyes and devour the stillness. I did it until I was full and as my weight shifted the cold air would hit my wet skin. It was time to crawl through the water back to the shoreline and tuck in, marking the last night and the end of another magical memorable trip to the treehouses at our hostel in the forest.

As my eyes finally closed an hour or more later, I promised myself again to come back. Maybe alone and definitely when it’s raining.

Friday

The following morning we found the weather was uncooperative at best, and after trucking it over to Jekyll Island for what we hoped to be a day with our books and our toes in the sand, but were foiled by big ugly red blotches on the radar that were circling us like The Jets. Or The Sharks. Whichever ones were the complete bungholes.

The lack of sunshine lead us to a dockside bar just outside the Jekyll Island Club, becuase really: cocktails make everything better on a girlie vacation. Something else that make everything better? Snapping shots, which my lovlies were patient enough to tolerate.

I can’t say enough about traveling with people who have a similar mindset about what a vacation is. There was no pressure to stay at our table and sip my naughty frothy adult beverage when I wanted to be down the dock shooting the end of a frayed rope. I sipped, I talked, I wandered, I shot, I sipped more, and then My Aunt arrived. That bitch.

Eventually we decided we weren’t going to let Mother Nature and her menopausal episodes (this reference is actually about the weather, I’m not always talking about my uterus) foil our plans. We got back in the Griswold family truckster and headed for St. Simons, we found a tide that dampened our towels and our bottoms but not our spirits. Gwen broke out the limes, Kel broke out the beer, I broke out my leatherman and we made our own perfection.

When the water finally crept up on our toes and chased us away, we traveled back to Jekyll and a place I’d been with The Mc. Correction: a place we’d gone, then left, because the hostess seated a table of children next to us while their parents sat further away and I had a melt down. We never did eat there, but I remembered it so there we were…at Sea Jay’s.

There we were, on the porch, looking out over the water and the slips with boats tied up and the underbelly of the bridge. There we were, sipping our drinks and contemplating our meals when a raccoon walked across the lawn. I’m not sure if all raccoons walk like this guy, but he moved a little like Forest Gump when he had the leg braces on. Didn’t stop the little fella from climbing up the tree closest to the diners and giving us all a sweet faced silent plea for scraps, though.

Dinner was devoured and it was on to the one and only appointment we had during our vacay: a turtle walk. After those crushing blows were delivered last month and my attempts to swim with turtles were thwarted by the H1N1, Gwen quietly slipped into uber considerate friend mode and made arrangements for us – and for me – to have a possible turtle sighting.

While our walk was not fruitful, we had an hour long stroll on the shoreline under the stars (I’d nearly forgotten what they looked like) and a moon that lit up the night so well there wasn’t a need for any man-made interference. The cooling sand, the salty air, the friends nearby but doing their own thing, and that moon and those stars…it was like a big sloppy kiss from the heavens.

If there’s anything that fresh air does, it’s wear you out. We drove back to the hostel mostly in silence, grabbed everything we’d need that night and scurried to our treehouse, hoping we’d outrun the skeeters.

We didn’t.