Just a couple short hours ago, I began the time off I said I was going to take last month.
To prepare for it, in the last week I earnestly can’t think of a freaking minute I wasn’t working. But I got one of my local volunteers trained in, deposit-paid, and raring to go to effectively be my body double for the minimum work that has to be done each day to keep Scarleteen running smoothly, and I got a few updates up before I headed out, too. I had a meeting with my new intern (did I mention I have one? I do: it’s very exciting) yesterday, so she’s all set to get started on her projects. The bills are paid. The clinic knows I’m AWOL through the 14th. I have my Reality Check pieces for the next two weeks sent in. I just need to push a couple buttons in a bit to add an update to the members area of this site.
I don’t have an autoresponder set for my email, because the last time I did that, it autoresponded retroactively to every email I ever got. Oops. Not doing that again. I do have a form letter ready I can cut as paste as needed, though, and should only need to check the work emails briefly every few days. As much of the world as I can possibly inform knows that for the next weekish, I’m off-duty and Not To Be Bothered.
I have a headache, of course, from all of that work in preparation, but I predict that it will soon pass. Especially since as I write this, I’m sitting on the futon on the porch during this lovely, sunny day, having taken a walk and ingested a quite delicious lunch paired with a very tall glass of juice. I’m writing now as a sort of welcoming-in ceremony for my beyond-needed, very-much-desired and first-ever-of-its-length Staycation.
Big breath in, even longer one out. Sun on the face, sun on the feet. Pug snoozing happily beside. Headache feels better already.
What’s the plan? For the rest of today it’s probably utter sloth. I intend to sit out here, moving on to a book, for as long as it stays warm and sunny. I might grab a hoop and play in the yard for a bit, but then again, I might not. A Buffy marathon may happen later, or I may marathon something far more silly, who knows. Even though I ordered in last night because I was on a work bender, I’ll probably do it again tonight.
Tomorrow, if the weather provides, I want to roll out of bed whenever I do, have some coffee WITHOUT starting my workday at the same time, and then grab my bike and go for a seriously long ride, stopping at the market on the way back to get some dinner goodies, maybe some champagne for mimosas for me, me and only me. I want to get cracking on one of the rooms that wants tidying, then I’m going to steam my face, take the longest bath in recorded history, sit with a wad of the color conditioner I like in my hair to put some of my red back where it belongs, try and nap, read some books and maybe take the pug on an evening stroll.
Thursday I want to spend the day just out in my neighborhood with no specific intent or plans. I actually got quite a few things done on my to-do-during-vacation list already that would not have been big stressors, but not so much fun, either, like making the garden path and getting kitchen curtains up. So, I have even more free time than I thought I would to do things like just bum around Ballard. I also want to get the damn hoop isolations down that I’ve been so frustrated trying to learn. Little more tidying, but not much. Thursday night I’m going out with a friend I have not seen in forever, and have seriously missed.
Friday I just try and keep my marbles together and not wear a path in the floors from excitedly pacing.
Because Friday night Blue gets here, after having driven across the country since Monday with a car overflowing with his worldly possessions as well as a nice, big (well, by her standards) dog for Sofia. Sofia has always wanted a big dog: when they walk past her, she will often sit down on the sidewalk and moon over them as they walk away, gazing in rapt adoration. So, as far as she and I are concerned, Blue’s dog is a present for her. I know, I just objectified a dog. I’m a terrible person.
We’ve recognized, for the record, that this is — in my estimation — all approximately 33% certifiably insane. Mind, a compelling argument could be made that the whole of my work and my life is, which either makes everything I do crazy or nothing I do crazy: I’m not sure which. But even by my lunatic-fringe standards, this is, partially, a little nuts.
There are sensible parts of this, to be sure. We have been reconnected for over a year and a half, we have been together again for nearing a year, and we’ve lived together before very well, and that was before either of us really knew how to live with anybody. Blue has wanted great big changes in his life for years: he’s getting them. We know full well that if we had him come here and we didn’t cohabitate, we’d basically just be paying two rents to still be in the same place every night, anyway. Plus, I like this old house, I don’t want to move until I can move to the islands ideally, I can’t afford it all by myself nor would I want such a big place just for myself, and if I got a roommate who had to live with the two of us fully reunited after seventeen years apart, they’d be wanting to rip out their own eyeballs and eardrums in no time flat. See? Crazy = practical.
Know what else? We both could use a big dose of doing something a bit loony. For myself, I get few opportunities to do so anymore, and I like the freedom of this, the kinda-unpredictability of this. I won’t say I don’t certainly have moments where I’m not like, “What on EARTH are we doing?” I do. But then I have this pretty simple answer I don’t have to think too hard about, which has something to do with following my guts, what they’re saying now and have said more than once before now. It also has something to do with this strong, mutual knowing what we want and need, and a knowing we fit both for each other, now and in the past. Really, the real question when it comes to pretty much all of this isn’t about what we’re doing now, but what the hell each of us, at given times, was possibly thinking in choosing not to do this until now.
Friday night it’s pretty much going to be car arrives, two people squealing like small children and scaring the crap out of the neighbors, arranging the dogs and getting some sort of leg up on making up for a fuck of a lot of lost time in several departments.
So, yeah, that’s Friday. And Saturday, and…well, no more budgeting days for us at that point. If history repeats itself — which, in our case, it clearly tends to a lot — I imagine that by Sunday night we might just consider leaving the house. Maybe. From then through the rest of my days off, I imagine we’ll tackle quite a lot of the things I have left on that list I made last month of what I’d like to do with my time off. Maybe we’ll grab the dogs and go to Vashon for a day or visit the zoo, we’ll get started on the settling in of stuff, who knows, but I assure you, it’ll all be good.
And after all this, my time for myself, my time once Blue completes his Odyssian journey here — a rather stellar combination, if you ask me — I imagine that when the time to get back to work rolls around again, this girl is going to be feeling a whole lot better.
Hello, vacation. You have no idea how happy I am to meet you.
October 7th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Enjoy.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:10 am
Sounds awesome. Drop me a line when you get back online etc…