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This mom is getting a workation.  OK, in all honesty it's really a vacation but I'm excited to pepper it with voice-over work.  As I write this, I am on a plane ALONE headed to San Fransisco, where I will attempt to buy new sunglasses and then board another plane BY MYSELF to Maui.  Did you hear me?  I said I'm traveling ALONE.

The nitty gritty is that my big brother went and knocked up his wife and they now have a beautiful baby girl.  My husband, who values family above most everything (single speed bicycles and date night being the exceptions) insisted, when we learned that bro was spawning, that I had to get myself to Hawaii and meet my niece.

It took a couple of months for me to decide that it would not be selfish to spend somewhere around a grand on myself.  It would be perfectly fine to take a vacation by myself.  It would be a much needed break for me and perhaps even for my husband and children.  I believe all of that now, but when this discussion started I really had a hard time even entertaining the thought.  Doesn't my husband also deserve a vacation?  Couldn't we save that money and put it back into the business or into something for the whole family?  He insisted that it was time for just me and to take it while I could.

It's no secret that I have little to no outside help keeping the girls from running amok during the week while I'm also working at a job that requires said children to often be quiet.  I love my work and I love my children so I consider myself lucky.  I also consider myself strung out, exhausted, in over my head, freaked out, and any number of things.  Totally normal, right?  Right?  

I certainly need this break.  And the closer the date of departure came, the more excited I got.  Until two days before, a Sunday, when I got nervous.  I realized I was going to miss my two little girls.  I hadn't been away from the youngest at all and the oldest, almost 4, only missed me for one night when I was off giving birth to her sister.  I came home the next day.  And as for my husband, the fantastic father and generous husband who insisted on this trip, we've been apart less than a week total in the more than eight years we've been married.  And before that... well, let's just say I haven't traveled alone in well over eight years.

When I got to the airport in Boston I almost cried kissing them all goodbye.  Thoughts of tragedy kept entering my head (and I'm not an alarmist -- I flew right after September 11 when people were still in panic mode and you couldn't bring much on board with you).  My hands were shaking and my heart was beating like crazy.  I walked alone into that terminal and I thought I'd break down.  I've traveled a lot in the last several years and have never felt nervous.  Was I worried that I wouldn't see my family again?  Was a sad?  Was it just because I didn't have the distraction of car seats and sippy cups and a huge stroller?  Or was it because I wasn't sure what I was going to do ALONE?