Vacation.

Whenever CCL goes on vacation, it is truly a vacation for me too.  It feels like my paid time-off is doubled every year, in fact.  Granted, she doesn’t always use up her vacation time in a given year & unfortunately for both of us, it’s use-or-lose with no carryover.  Sometimes she takes a day off because she has a doctor’s appointment at some point in a given day.  (We’re only required to take our time off in two-hour increments, so to take the whole day off for a one-hour appointment is unnecessary, but a dramatic way for her to tell everyone she’s going to the doctor.)  One year, she took off multiple days so she could stay home and read Harry Potter books or go to the Harry Potter movies.  And, yes, sometimes she takes it off just to stay at home with the cats because “they need Mommy time”.  (As much as I love my dogs, please note that I feel my time spent with them in the morning, evening and weekends is sufficient for their needs & I will never take time off just to hang out with them.  For vet appointments, sure—but I’m fortunate in that my vet has early morning drop-off and late evening pick-up available, so even then I don’t take time off.) 

One particularly memorable mini-vacation for me was when she took a couple of days off because they were paving the street in front of her house.  She couldn’t handle the stress of it and didn’t want to have to park her car on the street, as she was afraid someone would steal it.  So, she parked it at her parents’ house and had them drive her back home.  Each time she needed to go to the store, she’d call them to take her so that she didn’t have to have her car parked at the end of the street filled with $200K-250K townhouses.

Keep in mind she technically lives in our neighborhood.  Also keep in mind that almost every house in our neighborhood has at least one luxury vehicle in the driveway at any given time—and that often these vehicles are left out of the respective garages overnight.  I would think that if a vehicle were going to be stolen, it would not, in fact, be CCL’s red 2001 Chevy Cavalier, complete with trunk filled to the brim with empty grocery bags (that’s a story for another time), but rather it would be one of the high-end vehicles that would net the would-be thieves more money.  But that’s not how it works in CCL’s world.  She’s been brought up to be paranoid and thoroughly convinced that as a single female, she is the lone target of every unsavory character that lives within a 50-mile radius of her townhouse.  She once almost bought a personalized door hanger that included her name and her cats’ names, but ultimately decided against it because she thought that someone would see that two of the names were clearly for pets & thus, they’d deduce she’s a single female and would then break in to rob her and assault her person.  (Trust me.  I may be creative, but even I can’t make this stuff up.)  Personally, I’d not have bought the sign because it’s tacky.  For CCL, it can’t be that simple.

Today CCL reminded me that she’s on vacation tomorrow and Monday.  I congratulated her and told her to have fun.  I don’t know why I do that.  Every single time I simply open myself up to hear, “Oh, it won’t be fun because I’m [enter boring task here…this can range from ‘going shopping with my parents’ to ‘doing dishes’ ].”  It’s never anything pleasant & always something she’s dreading that I then must hear details about.  Today it was that she needs a four-day weekend in order to clean her house so that the HOA’s bug terminator crew can enter to do their thing.  I can only imagine the extra spray they have to apply to her house, as you know that it has to be bug heaven.

So, while CCL takes time off to try to get her house presentable enough that someone can enter it without suing for on-the-job injuries, I get time off from CCL!  Oh blessed, blessed day!  (And in this case, days!)  I am off to do my happy dance…out of CCL’s line of vision, of course.