Sunday, October 20, 2002
At Wednesday, about 4:30 p.m.
I'm out the door of my work. I'm on vacation.
On Friday, my boss calls me into one of those tiny fishbowl offices, the kind office designers shove into a floorplan as an afterthought. Tiny room. A couple mismatched chairs. A smallish round table with a drab office phone that matches the carpet. Windows the size of a child’s coffin by the door and one looking out into the real world. Not that you are missing much. The view is of a parking lot and another office building staring you down.
So, my boss tells me my vacation is a go. Oct. 24-30. That's Thursday-next Wednesday for you at home without a calendar. May seem odd, but Thursday-next Wednesday is my Monday-Friday, and I do everything in a one-week cycle...all my listings, handing all the mail for the weekly edition, everything. So, if I take off Thursday-next Wednesday, I can get away from all the duties that week. It's a clean break.
Better news: Since I'm on track to max out my hours again in a few weeks, I'm going to be forced to take more time off on top of my vacation to see my folks for Thanksgiving and my wife's folks. However, I did have the masterstroke of suggesting to my boss that instead of pushing me out the door for a week to just tack the time-off days to my vacation, fashioning it so I return on a Thursday, the beginning of a new cycle.
Now for the grim side.
I can only go into some of it here, but I'll reveal what I can. My vacation is taking place when my wife it out of town on work which, for the lack of a better description, sucks. Although I am an introvert, I hate being completely alone. I hate not having anything to preoccupy myself with to make up the vacancy that my wife's absence will put in my heart. In the past 24 hours, I finished Chuck Palahnuik's new novel and Timesplitters 2 for Gamecube.
I figure I have a few things to kill time, push time around and perform mental sleights of hand so I don't miss my wife.
- Write in my blog
- Clean out my closets
- Begin my cleansing routine
- Go on walks
- Do yoga
- Return book and game to their respective locales
I was thinking about more items when my wife's laughter rang throughout the house. I get up from the computer desk to walk through the kitchen to the living room. She tells me, in between giggles, about a funny commercial on television she just saw. It's nothing important, but I listen intently. I take in everything she says as she lays on the couch, her quilt wrapped around her. I don't know if I want her smell on the quilt or on the bed sheets. In the middle of the night, while she is gone, I'll roll over and smell her and be hit head-on that she's gone. A temporary death in the family.
If only I didn't have my vacation when she was gone. I'd try to reschedule, but it was enough of train wreck getting to this point that I don't want to try again. Strange, this vacation is becoming anything but my own luxury. I shouldn't bitch. It's time off. With pay.
At least I got through Palahnuik’s book before my wife leaves. I can’t take that much deliberate nihilism all alone.
French Word of the Day
ca va sans dire (sah vah sah deer): “That goes without saying”; obviously.
posted by skobJohn |
7:35 PM
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