Tomorrow after work I leave for our annual Girls' Weekend at a lake in Iowa.  I have been going to this lakehouse (owned by my friend's parents) since I was around eight.  Last year was the first year I have missed a weekend there in almost ten years.  I'm so excited to go and hang out with ten of my closest girlfriends, drink cheap wine and lay in the sun all day.

So why am I feeling so guilty?

Probably because, through the luck of the draw, I have three angel-free weekends coming up in rapid succession.  Two of them are even long weekends.  It all started out innocently - I am in a girlfriend's wedding in Chicago the last weekend in July. We were planning to take the little angel and struggling with detail coordination when my parents caught wind of it and offered to take her off our hands. I was relieved not to have to make her fly two times in one month.  Meanwhile, my college roommates and I conspired for a long weekend in Florida to celebrate my friend K's taking her comps on her way to principalhood/ship.  We haven't all been together sans spouses/boyfriends/children/other friends in probably ten years, either.  The problem?  This weekend is exactly one weekend after the wedding.  I didn't even realize this until earlier this month. 

Will the little angel forget me?  Probably not.  But all the sudden I can't sleep, and I have this horrible, pit-like feeling in my stomach that this will all be horrible.  I can't justify it - it's good for the little angel to have one-on-one time with my beloved (who hardly ever gets to feed or bathe her alone, because I always do it) and my parents (who worship the ground she walks on and beg to get her away from us).  When I am there, she does tend to focus on me.  I remember the look of sadness on my father's face last weekend in Chicago when he tried to hold her and she cried out, "Mama, Mama" when I came around the corner, wriggling to get away from him.  She won't do that if I'm not there.  But what will I do?

I know what I will do. I will drink through the pain, lie in the sun if I must, go to a Cubs game, and hang out with Sister Little and Rock Star Boyfriend without the child for the first time since she was born.  All of these events are GOOD THINGS.  Plus, she won't even remember this - you don't remember stuff before you are three, right?

Oh, the guilt.  How it tortureth.