It's vocation or vacation, some are workers, some are not

Heaven 17 - Crushed by the Wheels of Industry - 1983

I have returned!!!! You can all get up off your knees now, cease the fervent praying, put down the voodoo dolls. I am back.

I was on vacation. I kept it a secret to stave off the lurking paparazzi and potential stalkers. I didn't want anyone to know what I was doing on my magical vacation. So now that it's officially over, I'll give you all a day-by-day itinerary of what I did. In detail. You may want to pour yourself a drink. Pack rations. Plan your funeral and sign your will.

This is gonna be a long one.


Day 1, December 1, Saturday: Not really an official vacation day, but day one away from the office (I count weekends to make my life seem more interesting than it is). The Heat Miser and I are up and out of the house by 8 a.m. The Christmas season is upon us and we have a few gift purchases that actually require stepping foot into a shopping establishment. We hit 4 stores in 1 hour and then we are off to pick up a piece of furniture for the Princess. It was a vintage cabinet advertised on Craigslist. It exactly matches her kitchen table and since she is in desperate need of storage, it was a great find. Drive 4 cities away, wrestle the rather large cabinet down 2 flights of stairs, drive home, wrestle it back up to the Princess' apartment. Go home. Do laundry, clean yard in preparation for the real vacation.

Day 2, December 2, Sunday: Still not official vacation, but prep-for-vacation day. Go to Princess' apartment to help her re-organize some items and pack others away. After 3 hours, give up and come home. Rake eleventy gazillion leaves for the 4th time out of front yard ( because lazy ass neighbors rake NONE and New England decides to have winds of epic proportions). Curse neighbors, finish leaves, rub hands in anticipation of vacation!

Day 3, December 3, Monday: Even though it is officially the start of vacation, it is still not really vacation yet as I must fulfill my day of Volunteer training at Hospice. So I can be a better Pet Therapy Volunteer. In order to learn how to visit patients with my dog, I spend the day stocking shelves, passing out and cleaning up lunch trays, feeding people to weak to eat on their own, and running back and forth to the kitchen for special diet orders. Woooohoooooo! This vacation is shaping up to be a winner.

Day 4, December 4, Tuesday: Vacation begins!!!!!!!!!! Bounce out of bed at my 7:30 a.m alarm. Race to feed the dogs, let them out, clean the yard, take a shower, get dressed. Done by 8:15. Ready for the fun to begin. I start by going upstairs to the Princess' old room to move furniture. You see, in a Cape Cod style house, there is typically no attic, so storage space is tucked behind the eaves. To get at the lesser used items stored there, I had to move a chair, a dresser and a few smaller items. Heavy, but manageable. I was in! I found exactly what I was looking for. 63.7 boxes of Christmas decorations.

Spend ALL DAY lugging said boxes down the flight of stairs, decorating the inside of the house, putting up and decorating the Christmas tree, cleaning up my mess, lugging it back up the flight of stairs and unceremoniously dumping it on the floor of the Princess' former room.......too exhausted to put it all away again. Eat dinner, fall into bed.

Day 5, December 5, Wednesday: Hop lithely out of bed at the sound of the alarm, feed dogs, send them out, clean yard, take shower, get dressed. Decide that yesterday's vacation day was a pure anomaly and today will be better. Pull out my many pages of directions and set off on a new adventure. Removing the 20 + year old kitchen floor. LINOLEUM STICK-ON TILES. That have been firmly stuck for all of those 20 + years. The HM has been desperate to get rid of this floor for many years.

When we moved into the house, we hastily applied the tiles to cover the ancient mini-brick style linoleum that had been put down in the 1400's by marauding bands of Cherokee. It was off-white, impossible to keep clean with 5 dogs, curling at the edges and gross.

I first try to steam the tiles off. That seems to yield some disappointing results as dime sized pieces chip off at a maddeningly slow pace. Get out the big guns............heavy duty ice scraper. With some brute force, several carefully inserted curse words and a few quasi-prayers, tiles begin to pop off of the floor in record time. Before long----------all the tiles are removed! Now I am just left with a sticky, sticky, STICKY floor. And an enormous pile of broken linoleum pieces. Spend rest of afternoon cleaning kitchen mess and step-hop-jumping around the room to avoid being caught like Jeff Goldblum on a giant sheet of flypaper. Eat, fall into bed.

Day 6, December 6, Thursday: Roll out of bed, feed dogs.........etc. Make a batch of cupcakes and frost them. Wait for HM to come home. Drive to Princess' school to celebrate HER BIRTHDAY!!!!! Surprise her, stay with her and the kiddies for an hour, leave, bless the peace and quiet of the world outside of a pre-school classrooom, go out to lunch with the HM, go to nearby home improvement store, pick out new kitchen flooring, load it into car, go home, load floor from car to dining room. Take care of dogs, do laundry ( many items now filthy and/or sticky). Eat dinner, fall..........etc.

Day 7, December 7, Friday: Get up. Do morning stuff. Go to local hardware store. Get floor leveling compound for uneven areas of kitchen floor. Mix and apply compound, coat floor with Stain Kilz to get rid of sticky, sticky, STICKY. Marvel at my home-improvement skills. Go upstairs as Stain Kilz dries to clean and reorganize Princess' former room. Put away all decoration detrius, put furniture back, finish laundry, go back downstairs to kitchen and remove all 1/4 round molding from baseboards. Eat din..........etc.

Day 8, December 8, Saturday. Begrudgingly creep out of bed, stomp down the stairs, let the dogs out........etc. Don't even bother to shower.

Gather supplies, tools and the Heat Miser. Read directions and watch enclosed DVD on laminate floor installation. Begin.

Manage to install ENTIRE laminate kitchen floor in 5 hours!!!!!! Wooooohoooooo me! Begin to move appliance and furniture back into room, only to discover that refrigerator is now too high to fit under high alcove cabinets with the addition of the new floor. Move fridge back out, heatedly chop out bottom shelf of useless above-the-fridge-where-no-damn-person-can-reach-them cabinets, plane and sand the bottom of said cabinet doors, replace everything, move fridge back into alcove and sit on the floor unable to move from sheer exhaustion. Eat chips, go to bed.

Day 9, December 9, Sunday: Final day of vacation. Time to rest. Except that kitchen molding needs to be finished, door thresholds need to be installed. And, WE ARE GETTING A FUCKING ICE STORM!!! So, the garage needs to be cleaned and organized to fit at least one car in.

Finish all projects, sit in chair watching, but not actually seeing the television for 3 hours, drag myself into bed and realize I forgot to eat dinner. Go to sleep, dreaming of returning to work where I can sit in my comfy chair and lift nothing over 6 ounces.



Oh, and by the way, here is an example of the floor that I so lovingly installed (minus the fancy furniture that is not mine. It must belong to a muckety-muck at Dupont) . It really does look great and the HM is beyond thrilled. She can't wait for me to take some more vacation time. Next year, I'll donate my vacation time to someone else in need. Or insane.