Family Vacation or why the hell don't I live in San Francisco?

The family and I just spent February vacation visiting my sister in San Francisco.  I had every intention of writing a post from there because I am trying to get onto this women's blog site called, "Blog Her" and I need to write at least once per week to be considered, but chilling out in the City by the Bay without any animals besides my children to take care of, inspired me to say, "Fuck it."

There were no dogs to let out at 6am;  no chickens to tend to;  no bunnies to feel guilty about neglecting; no dog shit to shovel.  There was just me and my boys visiting my sister in a beautiful city full of the nicest people you could possibly imagine and really good food.

The lead up to the vacation was a little stressful.  I had the dogs all set to go to the kennel, but there are no kennels for chickens and rabbits that I know of.  Luckily, we have a great neighbor with whom we share critter sitting duties and he agreed to come feed the chickens, rabbits and cats while we were gone. I always feel a little guilty when I ask him to watch over the farmette because he is absolutely petrified of one of the animals croaking under his watch. I don't think he could bear the boys' devastation.

Vacation is one of those things that is incredibly awesome and incredibly shitty all at the same time.  When you are going about your normal day to day, you can be pretty happy and satisfied, but when you are on vacation you realize how much the day to day sucks.  It is so much nicer to drink good coffee and visit cool museums than it is to go to work, muck out stalls, get kids off to school or have to kick a cocky rooster in attack mode across the hen house.  The result is that whenever I am on vacation, I want to move to that place.  I could study cooking and sculpture in Paris. I could eat tappas and learn Spanish in Madrid. I could be a beach bum drinking margaritas and fishing in Nicaragua.  I could go hiking in the Redwoods and volunteer at the Marine Mammal Center every day in San Francisco.  When we were driving past the beach on our way to the airport at the end of our week, James Dean looked at me with a puckish grin and said, "Are you thinking what I am thinking?  We should move to San Francisco."

I know wanting to move to your vacation destination is probably a sign of a successful vacation, but I was filled with ennui nonetheless.

One thing I did learn while on vacation is that Prince is in full blown adolescence.  Every family photo we tried to take to prove to everyone on Facebook that we are a happy, loving supportive unit having the time of our lives on vacation, was met with some major tude by the long haired, camera averse pre-teen.

Honestly, these photos are much more what real families are like, but we all want the Brady Bunch fantasy to hang on our walls.  Back when I lived in Boston I met the most boring couple in the world.  Seriously, it was painful to be around them, but they had this photo over the sofa of the two of them, arms entwined laughing like they were having the time of their lives.  It was intoxicating.  I really wanted to cut out a photo of myself and paste it in between their happy faces so I could pretend I had been a part of that magical, fun filled moment too.

At one point on what was supposed to be our Zen-like visit to the beautiful Muir Woods, Prince declared he was going to find a new family to live with and planted himself on a park bench as we were on our way out.  At first I was upset but then got pissed off and was ready to leave his hormonal ass there for good because I hadn't taken my Evening Primrose to deal with my own PMS.  The husband wanted to give some random family $5 to go over to him and tell him they were taking him home, but poor little James Dean and Scrappy were very concerned about losing their brother or possibly that they were going to be the next ones sent off with strangers, so they convinced Prince to get in the car with us.

We came to an agreement that we would not take photos of him if he didn't want us to.  By the end of the week and countless photos of Scrappy hugging and kissing me, Prince tried to squeeze himself between his mother and brother for a photo op.  Score one for Mom!

Many times throughout our fun-filled week in my new favorite city, I thought about my sheep and my dream of cheese making. Of course this week I am on the Mediterranean diet like everyone else who read  the new study, so I am not eating dairy, which makes wanting to be a cheese maker a little weird, but last week when I was eating cheese and bread galore,  I started to have mixed feelings about my cheesy empire.  How would I ever go on vacation again? Having been a milk producer for almost six straight year myself, I am pretty sure you cannot leave a milking sheep alone for a week because she will probably keel over and die from engorgement.

Should I scrap the idea and just concentrate on the chickens and the garden?  Should I forget the sheep and just buy the milk from some other poor sap who can't ever go on vacation?  Neither option seemed quite right because I need photos to hang on the walls and post on Facebook of me confidently tending to my happy loving lambs.  Besides, I really am a sucker for the animals.

I pondered this dilemma for some time and came up with a solution most of us city transplant homesteaders who still like a week on the beach seem to do: Interns.  I am pretty sure I will be able to find some sucker, I mean earnest would be farmer who wants to literally get his or her hands dirty on the farmette.  Of course, an intern probably would like be able to learn something from the wise knowledgeable farmer he or she will be working with.  I guess it might be a while before I go on vacation again.

The boys and I left the husband in the city and headed home early Monday morning.  Jet lag, lack of sleep and the grey day left us all a little disappointed to be home.  We picked the dogs up from the kennel and their exuberance upon seeing us again cheered everyone up.  After checking on the chickens and bunnies and changing the cat box, I sat down to look through some of the photos of our wonderful week away.  That night when the kids went to bed I turned off the lights and looked at the newly fallen snow glittering in the light of the full moon.  You don't see that when you look out the window in San Francisco.  It was good to be home.