Away We Went

Memorial Day weekend may have only been a paltry three days long, but I latched onto it with an intensity that bemused the boy (and me, to a certain degree).  I was determined to make a mini-vacation out of it, if for no other reason than I have been in school for a long ten months now and I just wanted a break, dammit, but nope, school goes until the end of July.

We couldn't go more than four hours away because of work and school and those other things called "real life."  Also the dog had to come (again, real life).  So my hastily planned weekend basically consisted of three things:
1) Pit stop in Waterbury, VT to go to the Ben & Jerry's factory
2) Stay in northern New Hampshire, because Franconia is pretty and there's a yummy pancake restaurant.
3) Find a B&B that allows dogs, doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and has a room.

Oh, and go hiking.  Fresh air is good for my junky lungs and I wanted to get away from people.

Despite a profound lack of sophisticated thought and planning, we had a blast.  It rained almost the entire time.  It got down in the 30's at night and even snowed three inches (yes, really).  But it was really, really nice to go somewhere different and climb through mountains and wade through a freezing river and play Trivial Pursuit on his Blackberry on the drive home.

Whenever we go somewhere other than here, there's a part of me that lights up and thinks about, Well, what if we lived here? and I have all sorts of fun imagining things like living in the foothills of the White Mountains and driving a four-wheel drive pickup truck out to births, and growing a garden and hiking with the dog.  And it's not like There is better than Here, I think it's just about it being different.  But when my neighbors (who are now my friends) with the baby say things to me and him like, "You're not moving away from New Haven after you graduate, right?" while I snuggle the baby and blow raspberries in his neck, it makes me think to myself, Or, well, I guess we could stay here and be close to Boston and New York and family and friends and I'd grow a garden somehow and as long as we get a goat someday that I can name Cooper, it'll all work out that way too.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe I'm finally realizing that where you wind up living the majority of your life isn't necessarily a conclusion that you draw with a whole lot of profundity.  Maybe it's more like where you end up and where you grow roots and where you fall in love with building your world around you.  And maybe no matter how much you love where you are, you still go somewhere different and romantic for a weekend and think, Hey, what if...

And maybe there's nothing really wrong with that at all.