I'm waking up every hour throughout the night.  Every night this week I can't seem to sleep more than an hour at a time.  It's ok because I glance at the clock and drift right back off until 4am.  At 4am I wake up and can't go back to sleep.  It's starting to piss me off.  I'm stumbling through my days only half aware of what's going on around me.

Like most every other adult in this country, I need a vacation.  After a long stressful winter I need a break.  We're planning to take the kids to the beach for a week or so early in their summer break, but that isn't going to cut it for me.  I need quiet time.  I need down time that won't involve searching for entertainment and spending tons of money.  I don't need the beach.

Don't get me wrong, I love the beach.  I was a young adult the very first time I stood on a beach and saw an ocean stretched out before me.  I could sit and look at it forever.  That's one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had.  The smell of the saltwater and the wet breezes blowing over my skin.  It all takes my breath away.

But vacationing on the beach is too much work, and besides that, it's just not who I am.  I don't care if you're an eighteen year old college student or a fifty year old grandmother, I think the beach is too much work.  We struggle to make sure we're skinny enough, our breasts are big enough, our asses small enough.  We need just the right amount of tan before we hit the beach.  Our hair has to be in a style that looks good soaked and plastered to our faces.  Our suits need to show enough to be sexy but not so much to leave nothing to the imagination.  Then there's sunscreen and beach towels and something to do when pretending to be sunbathing is no longer interesting.  I swear that at thirty-six, I don't care what I look like on the beach as long as I'm having fun and enjoying time with my family.  And that's a big fat freaking lie.   I know for so many people that all sounds like heaven and it seems like I'm over thinking it, but it's just all a pain in the ass for me.

Give me a cabin in the mountains.  It doesn't need to be a resort.  I don't want to rough it, but I don't need five star accommodations, either.  Rent me a cabin for a week with a hot tub and a place for long walks.  Then I'm in heaven.  No one expects you to look good if you're hiking.

I woke up this morning thinking about it.  The sound of the wind rustling through trees.  The feel of stretching out calf muscles after climbing a hillside to look down over a the valley.  Watching birds soar above the tree lines.  Frogs and crickets singing at dusk.  Getting my feet wet from the dew on the grass early in the morning.  The taste of honeysuckle and wild blackberries.  Growing up I could spot teaberry from a mile away.  I can still taste the leaves when I think back.  I swear I can close my eyes and smell the moist scent of moss and tree bark. 

I love to sit and watch animals scurry about and freak out when they realize there's a human among them.  It's weird, really, considering I'm afraid of spiders and suffer from severe Ophidiophobia.  The spider thing is just a healthy fear, a respectful caution.  But let me spot a snake anywhere near me and I'm toast.  I can see a program on tv about them, and I will have a nightmare.  However, I'll brave it or the view from a lush green mountainside.

I really really need it, and I do see it in my near future.  T isn't a hiking, mosquito, bare feet kind of man, really.  But he'll do anything for a week of mind blowing, breath taking, knee buckling, soul wrenching, over the moon, did the earth just move sex.  And he knows if I'm rested and energized, that's just what he'll get.

I have to tell you this although my husband will kill me when he eventually gets the time to read over my recent posts.

My husband.  He's a hot little piece of ass, but that's not why I fell in love with him.  He is absolutely brilliant.  I'm talking intelligence on genius levels.  In the beginning, I did let his unbelievable intellect intimidate me.  But he's the kind of person that will communicate with everyone as his equal.  I have never heard him talk down to another person, not even when I thought they deserved it.  I love the way he TALKS WITH me.  I really can't imagine ever finding a subject we would not be able to discuss. 

Not only is he well educated and intelligent, but he has a creativity that makes me quite envious.  He has this imagination and gift of sight that just leaves me in awe because he also has the ability to express it.

Now.  Having sang his praises like this, just let me add, my husband is a complete idiot.  Even the six year old has to occasionally say, "Daddy, this is a serious moment!"  You should hear the exchanges between the two of them.  Sometimes I'm sure it's a foreign language that only the two of them speak.  The goofiness is endless.

However, even with that bit of child in him, he can be a very mature man.  You might be thinking oxymoron, "mature man", but it's true.  So sometimes the two of us like to disappear into our room at the end of the day to watch tv that doesn't involve a music video or a talking sponge.  We don't watch adult movies in the family room because, well, they're adult movies.  And by the term "adult", I don't mean porn. (David!)  I mean movies with complicated mature plots.  There are mature words, themes, and situations.  It might be a movie about physical or emotional abuse, some sort of violence, divorce, religion, anything is open, and yes, even erotic. 

The point of this is that my darling husband believes himself to be some sort of movie guru, so he's always perusing the internet looking for that perfect thought provoking, entertaining, obscure movie that is just perfect for us.  Many times they end up being foreign films that are critically acclaimed by this or that group, here or there.

Ninety percent of the time they are, without doubt, the absolute dumbest movies ever made.  I don't know how he does it.  With millions of movies to choose from, he manages to find the worst movies with the most horrifyingly stupid storylines that you can possibly imagine.  Now remember, this is coming from the woman who lives to watch giant man-eating bugs on SciFi.  I'm not hard to please.

Most times I can do nothing but sit and shake my head at the screen.  Sometimes I think he does it on purpose.  I think he chooses the most obscene crazy movies he can find just to get to spend two hours watching my reaction.  But after this past weekend, he's grounded from movie shopping.  I'm making all future purchases for our entertainment.

I love him, but there's really nothing left for him to beat after an evening of watching two people fuck on a beach with a bull standing beside them, completely motionless, staring at the camera the entire time.  The most calm, cool, collected animal I've ever seen.  (And that was the good part of the movie!)  I will NEVER let him live this one down. 

Ever.