What Will Suffice

via Flickr

Since I no longer have to worry about the well-being of America, I have decided that for my next vacation – scheduled for March – I will go to the Galapagos Islands.  Now let me be clear: I am not a travel person.  I am a vacation person.  In short, I am so pleased by the prospect of not having to check the Blackberry every five minutes that I am largely indifferent to how I will pass the time on those few precious days a year I am released from the chains of my livelihood.  (Melodrama intentional.)

But I went to Hawaii with the parents last Christmas, and by far the best part of it was the animals I saw everywhere.  The sea turtles, the seal that beached itself three houses down from the one we had rented, the sand crabs.  Oh, the sand crabs!  They burrowed into the sand whenever they felt me watching them, but once or twice I caught them sneaking about:

(I took far too many versions of this photograph than is healthy for a college-educated person.)

You see, I am thought of as rather outspoken in my ordinary daily life, and even my internet life, there is a surefire way to my heart, and it is animals.  I will throw around the word “patriarchy” at a dinner party, but put a kitten or a dog or even a hamster in front of me and I lapse into baby talk, often in a French-English patois.

So, I chose the Galapagos because I can’t picture anything more relaxing than hanging out with a bunch of iddle biddy widdle animahls.  Does this make me vapid?  Possibly.  But at the moment I’ll take a week of vapidity over a week of writing memoranda, so there you have it.