Click your heels three times and say...

...There's no place like Alaska
...There's no place like Alaska
...There's no place like Alaska

I need a vacation and I don't feel like a horrible person for wanting to go away while my family is struggling with all of this health crap.

Welllll... I do feel horrible of course, otherwise I wouldn't have felt the need to say I didn't. The logical part of me knows that I should go and have a good time. Yes, people I care about are sick and facing some tough stuff but I can't change that by sitting around the house feeling badly. I have spent a good portion of my adult life with the sick family cloud hanging over my head and I learned years ago that life can't stop because of it. I do KNOW these things.

Yet the emotional part of me can't imagine going away for a week while all this craziness is going on. I can't help by sitting around being sad, but I don't have to rub it on their face by going off on an adventure that they don't have the luxury of enjoying.

I know I need a break, and I know that I am heading into a long difficult stretch in the months ahead. It is actually a fortunate coincidence that this long planned vacation is falling right in the middle of a lull in the insanity. I should relish an opportunity to get away from it all since it may be a while before it happens again. I just wish I didn't feel so guilty.

I will go, I will have fun, and if I keep saying it enough times I will start to believe it! Right?

Hospitals shouldn't be better decorated than most homes!

Couldn't health care in this country be much cheaper if hospitals didn't pay so much to designers to look like this?

Truth be told, though, there is something comforting about sitting in a beautiful place during a stressful time...I guess I'll just focus on that and not the wasted money.