I am bracing for next week’s school vacation. On the one hand, I love the break from the routines of school. The kids can sleep late and that’s a good thing. They need the rest and we won’t have to pull our difficult-to-wake teen out of bed in the morning and push him out the door. Honestly, everyone, including parents, could use a respite from the relentless pressure of homework, school admissions, and the daily grind.

It’s also a great time to expose the kids to the wonders of the metropolis. The fantasy city vacation includes trips to Central Park to see The Gates, the museums, Broadway shows, sights of interest, and places they’ve never been to before (see Vacation Brainstorm below). Congrats if you can get the kids on-board for such ambitious and edifying excursions.

On the minus side, the mid-winter break is a sudden break from MY routine and that’s tough. I like my routines and I need them. When the kids finally get to school in the morning I sing a quiet, "Halleluah!" Not because I don’t love being with them. It just that morning drop-off  means I can devote myself to my work and some of the other  things in life that matter to me.

I am a private self and a public self, a family self and a single self. All these selves manage to co-mingle rather nicely most of the time. But vacations sometimes throw me for a loop. That’s when I need to be all my selves at once. It’s a challenge to find time for scintillating vacation activities, work, errands, and other responsibilities. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

It can be pretty schizzy and can lead to a quiet longing for my normal routine: A counting the days until the kids get back to school and we can all get back to what we were doing before the vacation.