Last night, I took my daughter with me to a couple stores where I was searching for new jeans and a clear drawstring backpack. While we were driving, she told me how much she likes the mall. “You can eat there and shop. How fun!” she exclaimed in her little almost-six voice. A girl after my own heart.

Today I am thinking about walking around the mall and how much I like it. I can’t explain it.

I’m also nostalgic for something though I can’t really put my finger on it. There is a word of Portuguese origin, saudade, that means “a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return”

I feel like I’m always like this – I feel the longing for a time and I know I didn’t even feel that at the time and I cannot ever go back to that. So really, we can only move forward and make new memories and have new experiences.

This weekend, Ash and I are going to a rock festival with a couple people and I am pretty excited at the same time as nervous. I get a little anxious about any and all trips. It’s about two hours away and the kids are in good hands but I also get worried about things I haven’t done before. But I am sure once the weekend commences, I will be fine. In fact, the first thing I am happy about is being able to leave a little early tomorrow. Slight reclamation of my freedom.

Really, I just think it’s time for a true vacation. Maybe a couple days at home then a couple days at the beach or something. Just spent waking up whenever, playing, listening to music, the sound of the waves, and drinking beer. THAT is my ideal get-away: some home time, some play time. I wonder if – in the event I can secure a new job – I could take a couple days at the end of my two weeks. I just want some week days home, to readjust my mindset.