Packing for a trip is worse than the outside stimuli that necessitated the trip in the first place.

At least with children it is.

A vacation.  A getaway.  A respite.  From everyday life and its trappings.  From routines and schedules.

That requires that every stitch of clothing in the home be washed so the one pair of sweatpants your child wants is clean – and located in the bottom of a basket of clothes that had been clean to begin with.

That requires digging through bins of off-season clothes to locate the bathing suits – and then digging some more to find the perfect one with the peace signs.

That requires testing dry-erase markers till we find one that hasn’t dried out yet for the all important game of car bingo – which will more likely be used to tattoo the inside of the car than the bingo card.

Books, magnetic games, coloring pages, stuffed friends, flash lights. . . . packed, unpacked, played with, tossed about the floor where they had previously sat stacked neatly waiting for loading into the car in the morning.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Can I just leave the kids at home?

Then it would be a vacation.