Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Title goes here.



Ah, vacation.  A week of 2 days’ worth of real relaxation.  Isn’t that always how it goes?

Saturday is travel and settle in day, with check-in at the inconvenient time of 3 p.m., ensuring that by dinnertime you’ve only just been able to sort out who is sleeping where and how many bags of ice you need to run out an get so the coolers stay cool and that all involved parties have adequate beverage available for at least the first 3 days.

Sunday is grocery  hop and get the boat day, both of which are done by noon which leaves many hours to decide how best to start relaxing.  Boat and float begin.  Someone cooks dinner, which cuts into the boat and float but is an accepted part of this self-catering holiday.  Someone, who might also have cooked dinner, has to do something for work and try to find a wifi signal to send some email, which finds her parked in front of her brothers’ lake house (which someone else is renting) gobbling up whatever thin weak strand of connection to the glorious internet there might be.

Monday.  More errands, as someone forgot to do a few things on Sunday and needs to go out, again, in the car, which is a shame.  The afternoon, though, is glorious and spent in much vacationing.

Tuesday and Wednesday, mercifully, are nothing but lounging.

By Thursday, though, someone needs to go to the grocery, the realization that Friday is really the last day of vacation and that’s tomorrow hits, there’s a crazed attempt to jam in more boating and floating, some familial misunderstandings (almost a full week of living with people to whom you are related but with whom you are not used to living with anymore will do that), and another dinner to cook are part of the later-week vacationer’s ‘to-do’ list.

By Friday, the thought of having to pack up and be out by Saturday morning at 10 a.m. looms large and thus the day is crammed full of boating and making to most of those expensive toys you’ve rented.  Also, don’t forget to break them while you’re very far from home.  That adds value, especially when there are no taxies in the area and therefore no other way to get home than pray that the marina has a mechanic and that the problems can be fixed (which there was, and they were).

See how quickly a week can go by, and how few actual lose-yourself moments there are?   And this is vacation without a script!  I can’t imagine doing some tour or Disney thing where each moment is preplanned.  The week would go by so much more quickly in that case, and it goes fast enough for my taste already!

One week ago today I was on my second day of no errands, no cooking, no plans.  I’m sure I woke up late, lounged over coffee while gazing at the lake, swam some, and boated some, but the memory is specifics is a little hazy.  Which is as it should be for vacation days.  Very little actual anything should happen, but you should probably be tired at the end of it.

Have you taken vacation yet this summer?  Was it wonderful?  Do tell, and have a wonderful Wednesday afternoon.

Tiff out.

5 comments:

kenju said...

No vacation for me. Since sometime in April, I have been cleaning closets, desks, drawers, storage areas, attic, garage and deciding what to do with all that I decided not to keep. Since April!! Believe it or not. I am sooo
f'n tired. We move tomorrow.

tiff said...

Tomorrow!! Wow. Good luck to you on the move.

LL said...

My whole life's a vacation... isn't it? ;P

carmilevy said...

I feel sad just reading this: down time is so precious, and we never seem to have enough of it. Here's hoping in a future life we all get a bit more of it so those in-between, truly restful days can number more than 2.

Jennifer said...

We are leaving in a couple of weeks for a week in Duck with the grandbaby, et.al., and this feels like the longest wait for a summer beach trip in the history of summers. I am so ready, even though I know it will be gone before it starts!