Living simply is so much harder with an audience...

A: "What am I going to tell the kids at school?"

Me: "About what?"

A: "When we have our 'what did you do over spring break' talk at school, what am I going to say? I can't say I stayed home all week, mostly in my pajamas, watching somebody dig poo juice out of our backyard!"

Me: "The boys would like the story about the backhoe and the poo juice."

A: "True."

Me: "And Grandma and Grandpa came to visit and you went on some bike rides and you read a good book, and you played with your brother and sister..." (feeling increasingly unworthy as a mother by the minute)

A: "I had a great time for break, you idiot*! I wish I could stay home for another week. It's just nobody at school knows how awesome it is to live in my life. They'd rather go to Mexico or Disneyland." *we're working on it.

Me: (wishing I had the right thing to say to make it feel OK to like our apparently unexciting but pretty darn awesome life even in the face of others' tales of exotic spring break vacations) "It's not about what other people think about your spring break, it's about how you feel about it."

A: "Not in first grade, Mom."

Ugh. Already? I wanted to say all kinds of things about how we always end up taking at least one cool vacation a year and we tend to be more conservative with our money - spending it on paying down the house and saving for college (alright, at least intending to...) rather than going to Club Med and yadda yadda yadda but I realized that it wouldn't translate for her and she'd probably come away feeling like she was somehow deprived.

I guess I'm the same way - perfectly happy with my boring clothes, decidedly unsexy minivan, and fairly low-key life. That is, until I'm confronted with the (self-proclaimed) fabulousness of others' lives - at which point I still find myself descending into fits of self-doubt. I hold onto the option of a life of solitude but I actually do like some people and I've already kind of forgotten how to talk to grown-ups.

So, I spent a few minutes this morning between retrieving Poppy from a neighborhood walkabout and meeting with "concrete guys" about that back patio surfing for fabulous vacation destinations. Right now I'm fascinated by Germany, Austria, and Croatia (on the "yeah right" list of destinations) and the Texas and Georgia coasts (definitely possible), and of course, various National Parks and dreams of a cross country road trip.

and then I remember that I'm being neurotic. Croatia does look pretty amazing, though!