Now I know

how an astronaut feels when he reenters the earth's

atmosphere after a spin in space.

Returning

home from a week's vacation is just as shocking to the

system.

A week on

the beach muddles your senses, spoils your sleeping

habits and generally transforms you into a tanned blob of

human matter.

As I pulled

into my driveway, the first thing I noticed was the

crabgrass. It had shot up a foot in a week. Also

accumulating about 12 inches was the pile of mail stacked

on the table. My daughter even swore the dogs had grown,

despite the fact that they are 18 months and 9 years old

respectively.

About the

only thing that failed to expand was the food in the

refrigerator. The few leftovers remaining had instead

burst into a bilious green bloom. The most exotically

molded was the sliced pineapple which developed a

beautiful white froth.

My brain

was suddenly on overload. Do we unpack the car, go

grocery shopping or take a nap first? A partial unloading

was crucial to restocking the car with grocery sacks, so

we went to work lugging sand-encrusted suitcases, leaking

coolers and salty flip-flops into the house.

Still

dressed in shorts and a Seagrove shirt, I roamed

supermarket aisles in search of milk, bread and

microwaveable food. The other customers were zipped into

fur-trimmed parkas and long pants, more appropriate for

the winter-type weather that swept into town Saturday. I

forged ahead freezing, until I had enough eats for a

couple meals.

On our

second day home, I caught up on sleep lost to central

time, daylight saving time and marathon Monopoly games.

Back to the grocery for school lunch supplies. That's

when it happened. I ran smack into my boss at the

magazine counter. I couldn't avoid the fact that work was

just about 16 hours away.

For a solid

week, I purged my brain of anything remotely important. I

skimmed magazines, watched cartoons with the kids, and

rented some of the most inane movies ever made. Chasing a

fluorescent orange golf ball around the wacky golf green

was the most strenuous exercise I had, aside from walking

to and from the surf.

Now I was

faced with the depressing preparations of getting ready

for school and work. It took only 16 loads of laundry to

get us back on track. Add that to mopping up the flood

from a leaky sink, walking two attention-starved dogs,

hearing about my mother's snowy trip to New Jersey and

her run in with Bruce Springsteen and you'll understand

why I'm asking for another week off... soon. .

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