The Working Vacation vs. Vacation at Work
After nearly four relaxing months at my job, it was time for me to come home for my vacation and do some work. For some reason, that doesn’t sound as backward as it may seem. It is probably the common complaint of workers everywhere, just thinking how much they could get done around the house if they didn’t have to go to a job so they could afford a house around which to get things done.
At least most folks commute to and from work every day, though more and more just go home on weekends. I could deal with that. I wouldn’t be able to do any large flash overhauls, but there is something to be said for more subtle and gradual improvements, a few hours after work here, a Saturday afternoon there, and little by little, you’ve constructed a showplace that will be the envy of all the neighbors…until finally they too get fed up with living in a dump and blow the kids’ college fund at Home Depot. Hey, Junior, community college isn’t so bad. You can live at home, get a job for a couple of years before traipsing off to such exotic and Bacchanalian dens as Charlottesville, or Blacksburg.
However, when one’s work takes him away for weeks, nay, months at a time, there is no such thing as subtle or gradual. The globe-trotting seafarer is expected to be outside EVERY DAY while he is home, toting that bale, lifting that barge, shoulder to the nose, wheel to the grindstone, the thrill of agony and the victory of defeat and all that.
“What!? You’ve been home for 3 weeks and the farm STILL looks like it did 5 months ago? Slacker! What you been doing, catching up on your soaps?”
So there is no such thing as gradual. Every 4 months I am expected to come home to the old Haney place from “Green Acres” and then leave 2 months later with the farm looking like Southfork from “Dallas,” except with marriages still intact. If we’re lucky.
I always look forward to coming home, and don’t get me wrong, it’s great to be here. I’ve been home about three full days now and my entire body is so covered in bumps, bruises and bites that I look like a five-foot eight-inch 210-pound dollop of tartar sauce, with hair in some places.
I’m fighting off jet lag at least successfully enough that I am no longer taking three-hour naps in the middle of the afternoon and then lying wide-eyed in my bed at 3 in the morning watching reruns of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” on the Chiller Channel…well, anyway, I should be over it by the time you read this.
In the meantime, there is much to do. There are the large piles of junk I have been meaning to get rid of for the last five years or so…actually, I do succeed in getting rid of a lot of it, but then I take it to the landfill and notice all the neat stuff that OTHER people have thrown out. Anyway, that is the stuff I’m getting rid of now, because the stuff turned out not to be so neat after all, and now my yard is even less neat, and it’s time for another trip (or five or six trips) to the landfill.
And this time I will not be tempted by other people’s rejects because I am going to drive to the landfill blindfolded. It’s a bit of a safety risk, but I’m a desperate man. I’ll try and let you know ahead of time when I’m going so you and your loved ones can be safely off the streets. And the sidewalks.
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