When is a vacation not a vacation?

When you have kids.

There is no vacation from parenting (unless someone else is doing your job).

That's why the Spouse and I have never wanted to take a vacation since our kids came. What's the point? Let's do exhausting childcare in a different locale WITHOUT all the convenience of home!

But this week we bit the bullet and went for a week to the place that most resembles paradise in the continental US - La Jolla, CA (but spoiler alert - it's not paradise if you bring tiny tyrants). We went NOT because we thought it would be relaxing in the least bit, but because we wanted to be with our far-flung family and sometimes "a change is as good as a rest."

We kicked it off right - an exhausting 12 hour car trip driving down from SF to SD. I can never look at my car again without thinking of a tiny torture chamber now, complete with phantom nausea.

Wanna get guaranteed dirty looks from a stranger? Bring your kids into a rest stop that sells breakable items.

The last 2 hours were spent like this. THANK THE LORD BABY JESUS.

The next day I escaped from the looney bin for a couple hours to have brunch at a delightfully hip restaurant with some friends I haven't seen in years.

One of my friends has 3 little ones at home and the two of us were like college girls on Spring break - Moms Gone Wild! It is an unbelievable HIGH to talk without being interrupted every 2.3 seconds. We were talking and laughing like a drowning person gulping pure oxygen - with pure joy and desperation.

One day if I've gone missing, this is the first place you should look.

And I ate better than I've eaten in years. A Paris-Brest puff pastry with strawberry compote and fresh marscapone? (Without grubby little hands grabbing it and wiping it all over my shirt?) I think I just died and met the angel Gabriel...who apparently moonlights as a waiter.

Anyway, since that delectable highlight, it's been nearly pure torture. Kids bouncing off the walls, annoying downstairs tenants, smearing food all over, dumping out crammed suitcases, coloring on white carpet - you know, being kids.

But at least we're being frustrated and tortured just 5 miles from the beach.

Ha, haha, ha, ha.

Sorry, gallows humor.