What I did for my vacation

I split five days off work over two weeks, taking Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then Monday and Tuesday. The time allowed me to drive to north Texas on Thursday to spend the night with Mom, then drive her to to Arkansas Friday and stay through Sunday, drive back and spend another night with Mom, then head back to Norman on Monday.

The weekend was jampacked with travel and ceremonies and celebrations, including my niece's pinning ceremony Friday to become a nurse and then her graduation Saturday, followed by a nice get-together of family and friends, then her birthday on Sunday, which also was Mother's Day.

And even with all that going on in Arkansas, I was not able to attend another niece's graduation from another Arkansas college, nor my nephew's graduation with a D.D.S in Oklahoma. It would have been a great weekend to be three places -- actually four, because cool stuff also was happening back in north Texas -- at once. I'm thankful that I've reached a point in my life where I can enjoy the moment and place I am at and not just be filled with regret or longing for where I cannot be at the same time.

No regrets. That's how I'm trying to live my life. It's challenging on days like Tuesday, the last day of my vacation, when I wonder where the time went and why I didn't get more done. But experience tells me I can't change what I did or didn't do, and fretting, worrying or regretting really won't make any difference. So I might as well accept it.

I am grateful for a very fulfilling weekend and a couple of especially refreshing walks to start the new week. I'm really not ready for this time off from work to end, but I think I will find that its richness does carry through and make potentially stressfully busy work days ahead easier to face with an upbeat attitude and positive spirit.