Staycation

If you visited the blog on Monday, you discovered there wasn’t a post. Sorry. This has been a crazy week. My mom had surgery, which had been planned for next week. My son finished his baseball season. And we’re on a staycation, i.e. a vacation at home.

For those of you who’ve never done a staycation, here’s how it goes. Knowing that the staycation is coming, you have a long to-do list because you imagine endless hours of free time. Naivety makes you forget that those hours are filled with all the normal stuff you regularly do (shop for groceries, cook meals, wash laundry, etc.) There go 5 hours a day of your vacation.

Regular life obligations don’t go away during the staycation. And it’s the end of your son’s baseball season, which means lots of games. So you sit on hard metal bleachers and contemplate suing the manufacturer for spinal pain and suffering.  That’s another 3 hours.

You do begin a small project that wasn’t on your list. Your husband asks why a massive weed covers a fence in your yard. You explain that it isn’t a weed, it’s a vine. A vine you paid good money for. You husband says, “It looks like a weed.” You say, “Um, it blooms.” Husband answers, “Weeds bloom.” You discuss the definition of weeds. Eventually, the decision is made to remove the weed-that-isn’t-really-a-weed-but-may-possibly-look-like-one. Weed removal one hour.

You visit your mom in the hospital and wonder how many surgeries she can endure. She’s at five major surgeries in 12 months. You are so thankful that it’s not you! (And you are amazed at the great attitude and perseverance that she has.) You try to make your mom laugh. But she makes you laugh when she asks you what the morphine button is for. These visits don’t count on the time meter. Not that they don’t take time, but that you can’t begrudge your mom anything.

So the first two days are gone. How did that happen? You wonder whether you should share your to-do list with your husband. It includes: organizing the basement, mulching the flower gardens, fixing the drip irrigation line (which was damaged in the weed replacement program), cleaning out the entry closet (actually, I’m going to assign this to a minion), taking a chainsaw to the overgrown trees, and packing school books into the attic. And, of course, there’s the ringer item—stripping the kitchen cabinets. I’d like to free them from their 70s coat of blond shellac and pickle them….Of course, we could always go to see a movie instead.