I Have PVSD

This week I have a case of PVSD (Post Vacation Stress Disorder). Every year we are counting down that last day in the car, excited to see our long lost home. But I forgot that the vacation aftermath just makes me tired.

Please children, ask another 43 times. It might make Mommy and Daddy drive faster.

It starts out with the the small things: Turning the heat back up and going through a week's worth of mail. You might not think that you get a lot of mail in one week, but stack it up and it looks like we hit the postal service jackpot. I sorted it into two piles: Hubby will deal with it and I'll deal with it. (Mine's still in its original pile on my desk. Shh, don't tell anyone.)

After that you start tackling the big things: Unpacking five people's worth of luggage, throwing in the first of many loads of  laundry, vacuuming out 3 kids worth of crumbs in the backseat of your car. I must have been so happy to get home that I was willing to do laps in order to put everything away. Or maybe it was the "I didn't exercise on vacation" guilt that prompted me to run around like a mad woman. Either way I was making up for lost time with my house.

Then the huge projects: Downloading all the pictures you took and going through 10 days of email. I don't know how I ended up subscribed to some of these email newsletters but some of them remind me of that annoying friend you had in school. The one that would write you 12 notes a day and call you 3, 4, or 5 times a night. I have companies who email me incessantly and I want to say, "I get it, you're having a sale. Enough." I had 770 emails. My finger was in jeopardy of getting "clicker-itis" from deleting so many times. Because that's the sad part. I kept a total of 7 and deleted the rest. We live in a spammy world!

But it doesn't end there. The first day back to work after vacation is always like trying to run uphill in molasses. In the winter. Naked. For every voice mail and issue you clear up, two more take their place. And even though you've been on vacation, no one else has. So when they come in and need you to do something for them, they can't figure out why you won't drop everything right then.

I know that life will smooth out again and everything will go back to its hunky dory status. In the meantime, I'll stock up on chocolate and romance novels. That's the prescription I use to cure PVSD.