Vacation Getaway

It was Christmas Day in the workhouse. -George Robert Sims

Depending on your perspective, I am on vacation from work this week. By my own choosing, I have grown into the annual habit of taking one week of vacation by myself. I engineer the timing of this grand event in June before the kids get out of school. So with the wife working and the kids receiving their educational entitlements, the big house of a hundred things to do is all mine. I never go away for this week so where do I start? In anticipation of this week long workfest, robust mental faculties are always utilized to round out a prioritized chore list. Err...my vacation consists of cranking the stereo and doing house projects. What a fireball of forty something homebody fun I am, huh? In actuality, projects are relaxing and I enjoy keeping up the appearance of our house. During my vacation I have stepped away from the house to play tennis, catch a Phillies game, go out to lunch with friends, and take in a movie the wife didn’t care to see. I stepped away long enough to convince myself that I am not an indentured slave to my own home.

I completed most of the wretched items on my pre-fabricated checklist by Thursday. I have laid sod, done concrete work, replaced wood decking, weeded all the gardens in our yard, washed second floor windows on a 25 foot ladder, scrubbed down the stucco, pruned trees, caulked anything that didn't move, and gave the hedgerow a precision haircut using my laser level. And that was just the outside work. I endured the high humidity and the humiliation of working in my beekeeper’s suit and nearly paid dearly without it whenever I left caution to the wind(see June 5, 2005 posting called School of Hard Knocks). All I have left to do is sand and paint two wooden porch rockers then cook side dishes for two upcoming picnics. Not bad.

A sense of completeness must have settled in because I found myself sitting on the porch tonight just enjoying an ice topped glass of lemonade. The farthest tool rested at a good ten feet away. The last bit of mortar was drying as darkness preyed upon the land. It felt good to relax and take in the sightlines of my own hard work. That is when my son came outside and just stared at me. Unless I am hunkered down at the computer, I suppose he is not used to seeing me idle. He kind of paced behind me for less than a minute.

“I don’t know how you have the attention span to just sit still like that and do nothing. I would be bored out of my mind!”

Sometimes doing nothing is harder than the actual work. Doing nothing isn’t for everyone and it can be overrated.