Last Week I Left The Grocery Store And Hadn't Forgotten Where I'd Parked, I Couldn't Remember Driving There In The First Place. Granted, I Go To The Grocery Store About Every 36 Hours, But Come On! I Was Seriously Checked Out. I Blamed It On The Fact Sinead O'Connor's Old Song, Nothing Compares 2 U, Was On The Radio And Any Woman Who Spent Her Young Adult Life In The Early '90s Cannot Avoid Singing At The Top Of Her Lungs When She Hears It. It's Pavlovian, Really.

Our trip to Costa Rica is just around the corner! I am out of my mind excited about our family getaway. I have worked out three times in the last month, so I should be good to go in the bikini department. Or not. Actually, I think my self-tanner errors will keep people from noticing I'm not exactly a Victoria's Secret model. They'll be too consumed with the incredibly orange color of my right ankle. As am I.

Anyway, vacations are on my mind. Don't you feel just getting away from your regular routine helps make you more conscious of life in general? I do. There is something about being somewhere else that makes even the mundane seem richer - like I seem to not only notice the smell of the air in a new place, but the weight of it too. Even the sounds of the rental car or taxi driving on the road seem louder or more pronounced to me. It's awesome. Vacations turn on parts of our brains that we tend to let go a little dull in our day-to-day lives.

I think it's fun and psychologically beneficial (like having a glass of wine on the patio) to try to live as if I was on vacation every day. To bring that same sense of consciousness and gratitude to my daily existence. It's not always possible, I mean no one would schedule a mammogram on vacation, but for most of what we do each day, we could likely stand to turn on our awareness and appreciation a bit more. Try to treat things as new to us or different each time we hear, see, smell or do them.

This is such a cool way to really get into the present moment. When you step inside your house, imagine you're entering a beautiful vacation home you'll be spending a couple weeks in over the summer. Or when you're driving to the grocery store, try to capture that feeling you get when you're driving to the local grocery on a vacation trip to grab some muffins and juice because eating breakfast out every day costs more than a plane ticket. You can find a million ways to live every day with the curiosity and joy of a vacation.

If you want to get really trippy with it, each moment is a new one so it really is like we're in a new place all the time. Right? Anyway, give it a go. If anything, even just a few moments of living with a vacation vibe is helpful.

I'm wearing this.

A stretchy, black, cotton shift is the Swiss Army knife of a wardrobe. This one is doing laundry, cleaning toilets, running to the bank, and going out to dinner. See what I mean?

gratitude: the word Aloha, black bikinis, backyard progress, family time

thank and love.