Three weeks ago today I had finished the first day of my two week vacation of back-to-back cruises having been on the beach in Half Moon Cay, Bahamas.  Today?  I’m bundled up in a hoodie snug inside of the house as Old Man Winter continues holding Wisconsin in his icy clutches.    Needless to say, I’m already missing the beach.

Arriving back to the farmstead from a two-week vacation has created what looks like the aftermath of a hurricane.  My dining table is strewn with receipts from places we went so I can head over to TripAdvisor and write reviews.  The local newspaper is stacked next to the laptop (also on the dining table) so that I can peruse the happenings that took place while Mr. Muse and I were gone.

Speaking of Mr. Muse, he and I managed to successfully remain illness-free until we got home a week ago.  Our two-connection set of flights from Ft. Lauderdale back to Madison were populated with at least a dozen people on each flight who insisted on sneezing into their hands or coughing, no hacking, into the canister of recirculated air that is a plane fuselage.  Thanks for that fellow travelers.  By the way – please learn to “Vampire Cough/Sneeze” and save the rest of us from your disease.

But, after two mornings of floating through life in a Nyquil fog, I find myself yearning for the beach, the surf and sand once more.  I miss the green.  The melting snow has revealed small patches of grass, brown and dormant.  I’m ready to smell the damp earth as it warms up for spring and little by little it’ll get there, but until then I’m paging through seed catalogs and gardening magazines.  My memory conjures up the scents I long for, dirt.

While I wait to get my hands in the dirt and plant seeds that will provide me food for many a meal to come, I’ll continue to recover from my travelers cold.  I’ll also write.  Travel reviews, posts for my blog, those of HomeClothesFree.com, AANR.com and articles for N Magazine.  I’ll also remember the feel of the sun on my skin and the sand in my toes as I anticipate summer and my recovery from winter.