It figures.

It took me 16 months to agree to this vacation. A vacation without the baby.

I mean, I’ve been away from her before for overnights, but most of those times she’s been left with Daddy, and when my daughter’s with Daddy it’s almost like being with Mama, he knows her moods and her quirks and her routines and she loves Daddy like she loves Mama, so when she’s with Daddy I don’t worry, I just miss her. And the one time Daddy wasn’t there and she was with Grandma, I was less than an hour away via car and I could get there, get there easily if anything untoward happened, which it wouldn’t, but if it did I could totally get there, Mama’s right here.

But this time, this time we were going to be far away, a 5 hour plane trip, and I can’t get there at the drop of a hat, and besides, my brain says, we’re a family, why are we not taking family vacations? Because she’s a toddler and a vacation with a toddler really isn’t a vacation, it’s the same routine and necessities of life, just in a different place, so we’d be paying $200 a night to do exactly the same thing we do at home, and we’re grownups and we need a vacation, especially me who has not in fact slept an entire night for over two years. So I knew I needed the vacation but I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to go so far away, and I stalled and stalled and stalled and hummed and hawed and put it off until my husband put his foot down and I finally agreed. But oh, I miss her, and it doesn’t feel natural to me to be so far away from my baby, but off we went, and it is good for us, and soul affirming, and relaxing, and it’s reminding us that we’re adults, and we actually like each other and got married for a reason, reasons we sometimes forget when we’re knee deep in Elmo and diapers, and this vacation is just what we needed, except.

Except, my beautiful daughter caught a cold last week, and the night before we got on the plane I woke up at midnight with a sore throat and chuckled to myself as I thought are you fucking kidding me, and then I willed myself to pretend I was healthy, I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick, I am not getting sick, and then I woke up that morning without a sore throat and felt triumphant, my mind over matter hippie mojo worked. And then we got on a plane and we flew to Vegas and we were at an expensive dinner with expensive food and expensive wine and my nose started running and it hasn’t stopped. I’m sick. Plain sick. In Vegas. And so we go for gourmet dinners I can’t taste, and for walks along the Strip to buy kleenex and non-pseudoephedrine-containing-drugs, and we return to the hotel room midday for naps not out of luxury but out of necessity.

And all I can say to that is?

Doesn’t it just figure.