Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I am exhausted trying to come up with a vacation destination, the last few choices having been abandoned for one reason or another. This morning, trying to be helpful, my husband asks if there are any places I would be sorry never to have seen, were I on my deathbed. I think about this for some time and say no, none that I could realistically visit. There are a few I can't get to, like Mt. Everest (I'm too old), Oz (it's fictional), New Zealand (eight hours in the air is my limit) and any other planet.

As for all the rest, I have been to foreign shores and sunny beaches and Disney parks and deep woods and seen mesas and deserts and mountains and Yellowstone and giant craters and big cities around the world.  Paris and London are New York City with accents. Ireland is Vermont. Italy is fabulous, but really, museums and shopping, eating and drinking--I can do that right here in Maine. Sure, it's fun to see odd flora and fauna and those tiny lizards on the sidewalks and cars driving on the wrong side of the road, but the bottom line is I am still me when I get there, and we still have to plan dinner every friggin' night!

Call me jaded, but what I'm really after is a change. Escape from the everyday. Somewhere else. A place where animals speak our language, the dead are available for short visits, coffee appears when I awake each morning and fireworks are a weather condition. Maybe an occasional frog storm. Now that would be a trip worth packing for.