Take me away.

from the plane on the way to Vegas- September 2010

Lately I've been having vacation dreams.  Lots of them.  These are not your typical, run-of-the mill, 'just driving a few hours to visit family' vacation dreams. (Frankly, that's not a vacation any which way you look at it.)  These are serious vacation dreams.  Over the weekend, I was standing on an isolated beach in the Caribbean with perfect white sands and my toes just reaching the warm, sapphire water.   There was not a single person around for miles and miles. A bunch of silly non-realistic things happened in the dream right after that- it was a dream after all- however, I woke up feeling like I had literally just been to the Caribbean.  That is one place that I have never been, so this dream in particular really stood out for me.

I told J about it that morning and how I got woken up by the salt truck driving on our street (reality, bummer), but tried to hurry up and fall back asleep because that was just before I found out what our hotel room looked like in the dream.  Seeing how hotel rooms are decorated in new locations is often just as exciting for me as the location itself.  Note:  "Our hotel room" yes, my dreams would not let me go on a beach vacation alone, because that- my friends, would be a nightmare in my book.  WAY too much silence and alone time for my liking.  Anyone else with me on that?

Regardless, for the past few weeks my dreams have definitely been dominated by various locations that I either have traveled or would like to travel.  One of my goals for the next few years is to make that 'I have traveled' list much longer than it currently is.  (Currently:  Bermuda, New York City, Buffalo, Cincinnati/Dayton, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Niagara Falls, Washington D.C., St. Paul, Cleveland, Dallas, Erie, Orlando, done.) My family never traveled much while I was growing up, which, at first I was upset about- especially when my good friends would be leaving for their second beach vacation of the year.  However, being older and wiser, I would much rather be seeing these beautiful and interesting places for the first time in my twenties and thirties because I truly do not remember many places that I went prior to graduating high school. 

I think all of this nostalgia/dreaming about vacations centers around the fact that in two weeks we were supposed to be going here. Seven days, six nights at the nicest resort in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic for our 'real' honeymoon.  (See mini-moon, aka actual honeymoon, here.)  We decided to push that big vacation to another year for a number of reasons that don't really matter at this point.  Although looking out the window and seeing frosty dead trees instead of palm trees at the end of the month WILL be quite a bummer, it has also been another goal of mine to become more financially stable, and spending thousands of dollars on a vacation would not have helped me to accomplish that.  And so, I wish that my subconscious could become more cognizant of my new goals, and stop teasing me with all of these extravagant travel dreams.  Take me away.