Las Vegas Here I Come!

Monday, September 28, 2009 - 6:20 P.M. I seem to have been slowly running out of energy during the last few weeks. When I first got up in the mornings, I usually felt good, but by the latter part of the day there was nothing left in me.   Going to bed at 9:30 at night, and then watching television for another two to three hours before actually turning the TV off, may have had something to do with why I have not been feeling too good. I will try and change my sleeping habits this week to see if that makes a difference in how I feel.   This morning I went to a family counseling session at the mental health clinic. My brother was there, along with my therapist, Dale, and my psychologist, Dr. Martin. Our sister has been in Europe for the past two weeks, and will not return for one more, so she was not in attendance with us -- not that she would have been anyway.   Dale started out by saying that since most of my family had been going on several vacations recently; he was concerned that I was going through what he termed, "vacation abandonment." He and Dr. Martin felt that I also needed to go on a vacation, especially since I have not been on one in several years.   My brother and I informed them that I had been planning on going to Las Vegas in either March or April of the coming year. While they were happy to hear that I had agreed to go on a vacation, at my brother's expense, they wanted me to go during October.   I said that it was not exactly that easy for me to go traveling because I had a lot of things that had to be taken into consideration, such as getting someone to go with me. Dr. Martin asked me if I wanted to go somewhere. I made the mistake of making a hasty reply to the effect that, "I will do anything to get away from Denver." (I should have said "almost anything.")   They asked me what boundaries I felt were keeping me from making a decision to go somewhere. I gave them about five different things that I could think of right off the top of my head. During the following conversations, they managed to knock out all five of them, so now I have to think of some more because they are still insisting that I plan on going during October.   It seems to me that if I am going to go on a vacation because I want to do it, then it should be up to me to decide when I want to go, rather than have someone else make that determination for me.   I named a couple of CNA's who I said that I would contact to see if one of them could go with me. I said that I would contact them either tonight or tomorrow to see if one or the other would be willing to go with me. I intend to do just that, but I am also going to hold out for making the trip when I want to, rather than when they want me to go, and I still intend to go during March or April. I have been told that the tourist season has not started by then, and that the weather conditions are good at that time of year.   No matter when I do wind up going, it is my brother's intention that I only be gone for about three or four days, but I plan on trying to stretch that into one week. I tried explaining to all of them that I was not exactly an expert when it came to figuring out what I could do for fun, but my brother insisted that he thought I could figure something out. Since that was what happened when I went to Hawaii several years ago, he may be right.