Ribbit

The Angry Redhead has introduced me to the term Lilypads.  I first wandered over to her blog when she was cooling it on a lilypad – aka a vacation, a lilypad on the pond of everyday life.  Her first blogged lilypad was a diving trip to Belize – she took several other trips that year, taking fantastic pictures along the way, and if you want to while away an hour or three daydreaming about fantastic places (or just ordinary life in Seattle), click on her link and read away.

But anyway, advertising for fellow bloggers aside, I like the term.  That’s sort of how I view my life – I think the Professor is the same way.  We live, we work, we make dinner, we read, we go on about daily life, but we spend a disproportionate amount of leisure time daydreaming about future trips and events we’ll take.  We hop from pad to pad – mentally I spend much more time on those lilypads and much less time treading water in the pond than in reality.  Weeks of normal working life compress into tiny nuggets of time, and the actual tiny nuggets of time that we spend on trips expand and become what I think of as my life.  It makes time go too fast, but it’s how I’m made.

So, here, at this point, are our lilypads for the next year:

Lilypad 1: Christmas in South Carolina, December 23-26

Lilypad 2: New Years at the Biltmore Estate, seeing the Christmas candlelight tour, December 30-January 1.

Lilypad 3: Honeymoon in St. Croix and St. John, this one is LOOOOONG overdue, March 10-17

Lilypad 4: Graduation for sister #2 in Pennsylvania, May 18-20

Lilypad 5: **Possibly, haven’t actually been invited yet** Cousin’s wedding in Pennsylvania, June 9; followed by W_____ Sisters’ Biannual Vacation, New York City, til June 11

Lilypad 6: Out West, to Denver and Tuscon to see family and friends, June 30-July 8

Lilypad 7: **Possibly, haven’t actually been invited yet** Cousin’s wedding in Pennsylvania, Sept 14-16

Lilypad 8: Christmas in Nashville with the family, December 21-Jan 1

There are a few other minililypads in there, including a couple of trips to South Carolina to see plays, some camping trips, our as-yet-undecided anniversary (it’s my year to plan), Thanksgiving.  But these are our major trips for the year.  In 2008 the Professor will have a big ole lilypad – he’ll be heading to Brazil for 6 months in January.  But if I start looking forward to 2008, then before I know it my life will be over, so we’ll stick with ’07 for now.

May your life be filled with lilypads.