I am the kind of person that you never want to take a vacation with. Heck, I don' t even know why I vacation with me anymore. I have become very ill on at least four car trips, vomited up and down both coasts, ripped up the soft tissue of my right knee in the Outer Banks (requiring surgery and six months of physical therapy), been evacuated for weather concerns twice, had car trouble expensive enough to truncate and/or cancel three separate trips and had three other vacations seriously impacted by terrorist activities. And as of the weekend, my streak is intact.


My son, his au pair and I drove to Williamsburg on Saturday to spend a couple days with my parents. Not only did the weather completely suck, but I ended up developing some kind of stomach bug and spent all day Monday in bed, moaning and heaving. I mean, really. I am seriously considering never going anywhere again. Actually, that's not true. I'm too much of a wander bug to stay in one place for long. So now we're considering plans for an August trip and I feel compelled to check the hurricane predictions and start wrapping myself in bubble wrap. I should post my destinations as a public service to let everyone else know to stay away. It's really a shame.


But I'm feeling (mostly) better today, though, so I've started making more mango jam. It's funny, but this is the first thing I'm making "again" since I started canning. And it just doesn't feel the same. Maybe I'm missing that sense of discovery this time, that feeling of "wow! look what I'm doing!". Still, the mango smells great and it's a nice way to spend some time at the table with my son, who is not feeling at all well today. Hmmm...I wonder why? Could it be that he spent a lot of quality time with an up-chucking mom earlier this week?


After their week in Williamsburg is over, my parents are stopping by here on their way back home. I'm a little nervous, because the house isn't quite "parent-ready" yet. My mom is, as I have mentioned, very fastidious and I, as you may have gathered, am not. We have pictures still unhung, boxes still unpacked, laundry piled around the basement floor and so on. The odds of getting everything whipped into shape before Saturday afternoon are pretty small and the odds of me getting completely frustrated trying are very high. Well, better get on with that jam.