My husband gets a fair amount of vacation time. Not as much as schoolteachers, say, but four weeks is far more than most in corporate America are blessed with. Sadly this year we haven't had a penny to spare for travel, so save for a few whirlwind road-trips to L.A. to see my family, we've "stay-cationed," not vacationed. It's been a telling experience, to say the least. The first week he took off in January sucked. We both got a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad flu and spent nine whole days hacking up a lung and watching Law & Order re-runs. Yeah, it sucked.
The second week he took in April was dedicated to getting our taxes done. That one was pretty bad, too. See, I was supposed to have done something throughout the year to keep our paperwork organized, not wait until early April to start on twelve months of record keeping. Realistically, my basic level of functioning at that time was so low I was barely getting the bills paid and dogs fed on a regular basis. Anything tax or accounting related was as high on my priority list as climbing Mt. Everest. Not very. My husband got a little pissed at how disorganized I was, and how much work his vacation actually turned out to be. So that's how the second week of vacation went. The third week he took in September was a bit better. Of course at this point he was so overwrought, exhausted, short-fused and disillusioned, the dear man pretty much just slept. Which he needed.
But at this point we are both getting a little irritated. Okay, fine, irately pissed off is more accurate. There's nothing like down time to stimulate a little reflection on life. When did we become so broken? When did life go so wrong? How do we get out of this eternal deficit circumstances keep sucking us into? The questions whirled around and around, but there weren't any answers to be had. Luckily by now I'd discovered both juicing and my favorite new mantra, What Is Is. And thank God I had, because somehow, someway, I found the strength to stop asking those questions, quit dwelling on what I don't have, how wrong everything went and bad everything sucks. The ability to accept and move forward, shedding all expectations of fairness, entitlement, and absolute understanding, became mine. This past week was his final week of vacation for the year. There was still some of life's junk to clear up, but we laughed a lot, too. We had fun hanging out, being silly, taking the dogs to the park, cooking together. Just being. Which is all I ever wanted to do in the first place. It just took us eleven months to get here.
Thanks for joining,
Leah
