In the Kingdom, days are busy. There is schlepping to and fro. There is the feeding of mouths. There is the constant switcharoo of washer to dryer to dining room table where the laundry sits and awaits folding. There is diplomacy and refereeing.
Then again, the Queen may just repeating what she said the other day. Kind of.
In other words, while Summer is a time of breaks and vacations, the Queen seems to not have the same luxury. She’s not complaining, not really. She’s merely stating the obvious.
That’s about to change, however. Even though it’s temporary, a staycation is coming.
Sure, the Queen adores her King. She adores her youngest prince.
They are deeply embedded within her heart.
But that certainly doesn’t change the fact that she’s looking forward to their annual camping trip. The one she doesn’t happen to be included in.
They will be off exploring the wilderness for six whole days. Sleeping in a camper bought from Craigslist. Eating hot dogs cooked over a roaring campfire. Fishing for…welll…fish from a paddle boat launched into the middle of some lake or another.
The Queen has thoughts of writing, sleeping, hanging, relaxing…all floating through her daydreaming head.
She knows that there will be other, more self-sustaining prince and princesses, left behind with her. But those sleep until noon. They leave for the day (after noon, of course) with friends. They go to work. They do stuff that they don’t want the Queen to do with them.
The Queen remembers a time when, she too, was a teenaged royal. She wanted nothing to do with her parents either.
The teenage Prince and Princesses are practically the same as having no one home. Except when they are hungry and then all their life skills disappear and they regress to infants who cry to be fed.
Pizza will be served. A lot. Probably too much. But, the Queen doesn’t care.
Let them eat pie.
Pizza pie.
The vacant side of the giant, King-sized bed will be filled with the Queens form, all sprawled out. Covers will be hogged. Pillows will be piled. Sure, she’ll have to share space with the royal menagerie but a gentle kick moves them out of her way.
The vacant days, generally filled with barking orders of the King and non-stop (yet adorable) chatter of the 10 year old Prince…those will be filled with the clicking of the keyboard. Because the Queen fully intends on trying to be productive. She fully intends on writing.
The vacant evenings, normally enveloped in television shows like MMA or car shows (and sometimes, the shows the King and Queen dvr to watch together), will be filled with…
NOTHING unless the Queen decides she wants to fill in those vacancies with SOMETHING.
The more the Queen thinks about those six blissful days the more she gets this odd feeling, deep within the pit of her stomach.
It’s quite unexpected considering the circumstance.
She’s wondering, if by some small chance, she is already starting to feel some sort of homesickness before her Staycation has even begun.