Post Vacation Depression Delayed Due to Havoc at Home

The excitement of travel usually ends with a big dip in adrenaline once you get back home. So much happens in such a short period of time that we feel as if a lot more time actually passed.

“What?” we think, “It has only been two weeks?”

After all, the normalcy of walking into your office and seeing the lady who has worked as the boss' admin sitting at the same desk, day after day suddenly seems weird. So much changed inside of you! You saw new places. You experienced new people. You learned exciting histories. How could this woman possibly still be date stamping incoming mail?

It's just depressing. But it's also totally normal. 

In that two weeks, you also worry that since so much is happening to you, there are all kinds of horrible things that might happen to your home in your absence. It might be broken into, burnt to the ground, caved in, or otherwise messed up. Usually, it never is. It is just like the lady at the office

But, this time, my arrival home from vacation was a little different.

We came home a few days ago from two weeks away -- a week after a huge storm appeared in the midwest and uprooted trees, blew roofs off of houses, and knocked out the electricity in four states. Our house was NOT in the same order that we had left it. But we were lucky. There was no bashed in roof or anything, just the aftermath of the insipid electrical flatline. 

This equaled six days of hot, enclosed rooms where wood floors, brown rice and ivy plants seemed to converge.  Then, when the electricity was restored to our neighborhood, our air conditioner did not come back on. We came back three days after that, giving it all time flourish into a full-fledged jungle.

The interior of our home during that time became a tropical biology experiment. New style bugs emerged from the pantry and you don't even want to know about the inside of the refrigerator. At least it was an excuse to do a total clean out where I inspected each item, thinking, “I should have thrown this out six months ago anyway!”

So, I admit, this is a high class problem: “Help me!! It's so hot in here! There is a mosquito in the living room! I cannot power up my iPod! I'm in hell!” 

Meanwhile, I just came from a locale where most people live in huts with dirt floors and grass roofs and no air conditioning – ever.

After a few days of opening and shutting windows, cleaning, cleaning out, and vacuuming, we are back to the old normal. 

 

This actually turned out to be a good readjustment back into the real world after a vacation. The post-vacation depression is probably coming as the excitement wears off. But I'm ready for it. It's normal.