Pack Up Your Worries.....

Did you ever feel like just running away... just packing a case and leaving all your troubles behind? Well I finally did it. After a chat with Mum and saying how much I needed a holiday but couldn't afford to take one, she told me I couldn't afford not to. If I were to crack under the pressure I wouldn't be any good to anyone. That's all the arm twisting I needed to promptly organise to send Munchkin to her father for a week and fill the fridge and presses with food for the Gruesome Twosome. It something I think every parent dreams of but seldom plucks up the courage (or stupidity) to do. I'm not going to bore you with the details of the pressures leading up to my bolt for freedom but suffice to say I was bowing under the considerable pressure. So off I went armed with sun lotion, mental bubblegum books that required no effort to read and most certainly didn't contain the "A" word, and the perfect travel companion whom for the purpose of this blog shall be called Vixen :)



Vixen (yummy mummy to a couple of Aspie/Auties), and myself jetted off on a whim to Tunisia where once there, we quickly settled into our new surroundings. We had decided to go all inclusive as neither of us had the energy or decisiveness after a stressful year to even make decisions such as where to eat or what to do. When you've spent all year making difficult decisions, and being the primary carer for your children, sometimes you just don't have any head space left for the mundane choices. Its astonishing though when you are so used to "doing" all the time, how slowly time actually passes as several times over the week we felt as if we were in a time warp!

We discovered our Inner Auties on holidays and on one of the last nights, had a discussion over our dinner at how comfortable it had been NOT to feel the pressure to talk, or feel the need to explain that you weren't in a bad mood, or upset, you just didn't want to open your mouth and fill the silence. That's not to say that we didn't communicate during our time away, just communicated in grunts or nods if it was the wrong side of noon... Sometimes silence is indeed golden. It was amusing to note that we sat at the same table in the dining room each night, varied our food only a little and lounged on the side of the pool in the one spot all week....

At the resort, the majority of people spoke French as a first language. Vixen has no French and I have some so it was interesting trying to communicate with others. Essentially, Vixen was the non verbal one and I was the newly verbal with my Pigeon French. It struck us that this must be how our kiddies feel when in social situations and finding it difficult. I really had to struggle to listen and found that I could comprehend far more than I could verbalise. Vixen laughed at the fact that even if she said "I don't understand", someone would speak slower and say the exact same phrase as if that would make the difference, again and again.....




At the markets, we were hassled beyond belief by the traders and locals attempting to catch our attention, talk to us, get our business and we learned extremely fast that the best and most effective way of ignoring them was to avoid all eye contact (sounding familiar?) It was actually liberating to not feel the pressure of social niceties and allow yourself to be "rude" and totally blank these strangers who wanted to invade our personal space. I found a new appreciation of why and how our kids sometimes blank us or appear not to see or hear us. Its not "rudeness" as if that was the case we'd have spent our time just saying bog off. It was easier and far more effective to just ignore completely!

All in all, I think we learned a lot from our holiday. Not only did we get to relax and recharge the batteries, we discovered a little what it feels like to be inside our children's heads even if just briefly, and I must say, I liked it :)