The Trouble with Vacation...

The problem with having nice long vacations is that you fall too completely into the vacation rhythm. You have time to fully adjust your schedule.

During a short break you're constantly catching up: getting your teeth cleaned because you can finally spare the time, vacuuming the carpets that only get vacuumed during breaks, tying up loose ends from the frantic last two weeks before the vacation, and then turning right around and getting ready to go back.

On the other hand, on a long break you have time between the catching up and the getting ready to actually fall into a routine: having a leisurely breakfast, going to the gym, reading in the evenings, cooking nice dinners. By the time you have to start getting ready to go back, you have a whole new schedule that gets interrupted.

I think the solution is obvious: make all breaks longer and more frequent, so that the work-time schedule is the anomaly, coming in brief spates, and the relaxed schedule is the norm. It also would reduce or eliminate the catching up period at the beginning of each break if breaks were frequent enough, so they wouldn't need to all be 3-4 weeks long for full effect. I think perhaps a week off each month would do the trick.

Feel free to suggest this to your employers and educational institutions...

An Open Letter (7)

Dear NY/NJ Metropolitan Area,

I love you, you know I do. I grew up here - I've spent the majority of my life here. I love the way the leaves change color in the fall, I love the chaos and crowds of The City (and that anyone from here know that The City is the *only* city). I love that I can find gluten free vegan pizza AND gluten free vegan cupckaes within a few blocks of each other, and that the best *normal* pizza I've ever had is just a mile from my parents' suburban house (in their little Italian town).

But we need to talk about this weather. Today I left the house wearing long johns under my jeans and a wool sweater and a down vest between my shirt and my knee-length, heavy down coat. Need I mention the hat and mittens? And yet I was cold. The wind, the maybe-sort-of-freezing rain, the complete lack of sun - they stole all my warmth, and a little piece of my soul.

And so, NY/NJ, I'm giving you fair warning: I'm afraid I won't be able to continue this way. Everyone says the globe is warming, and maybe you can take advantage of that and turn "winter" into "two weeks of fluffy, snowglobe snow in January flanked on both sides by months of warm sunshine with temperatures no lower than 50*." Wouldn't you like that just as much as I would? Imagine all the happy children who could play outdoors in November and February without worrying about losing toes!

If you can't manage that, though - that one minor concession - I just might have to leave. Because I value both my warmth and my soul and am not prepared to surrender them to your weather.

I'll miss you.

Whole-ly Over It.

I used to love shopping at Whole Foods - it was like a magical land of organic foods, products I had never seen in an ordinary grocery store, things I'd never even heard of! When the first one opened within driving distance of where I lived at the time, a friend and I went just to wander around and were so enthralled that we didn't even heard the announcements that the store was closing. An employee had to come up to us and tell us to leave.

Then I started not eating certain ingredients that are basically essential to every packaged food in your typical grocery store (i.e. gluten), and I got excited about Whole Foods all over again: there were multiple gluten free products, and they were marked as such on the shelves! I didn't have to spend hours reading labels to weed out things that would make me feel terrible - I could just go to the gluten-free section! Amazing!

But I just got back from Whole Foods, and instead of "wow" it was all about "I know it was weird that 'snack' bars were here and some of the 'energy' bars were over there and some were somewhere else but it's far more confusing now that they've all been moved to be near the cosmetics," and "since there's a shelf full of the white bread variety and zero of the whole grain variety, as there has been the last few times I've been here, why haven't they changed their ordering yet?" "There's a sale tag by that gluten free item! ...which is in the wrong place, and it's something else that's on sale." And on and on.

I guess I should just add to my fantasy list:
"Someday I'll find a food store that carries real food - including some gluten free convenience items - at reasonable prices, organized in a way that makes sense to anyone other than the one guy who set it up."

My Fantasies.

1. That someday I will have a computer that actually does the things I want it to do. This does not include unreasonable expectations, like dusting my house. This does include things like turning on and remaining on when I attempt to run a program.

2. That someday I'll sleep more than four hours without waking up.

3. That someday all of the people I work with will be competent and considerate and able to communicate with other humans.

4. That someday I'll live in an apartment with free laundry in the building AND a functioning dishwasher in the kitchen.

5. That someday I won't have to check my bank account balance before deciding whether or not to go out for dinner.

6. That someday I'll regain the ability to stream Netflix. *sigh*

Time Warp

For a truly surreal experience: return to your hometown, see a bunch of people you haven't seen for a lot of years, and then sort through all the crap you left in your parents' house and forgot existed.

Even better, do this just at the moment when you're preparing to ship yourself far from home to have a second try at something you swore, after the first time, you'd never do again. Just as you're beginning (again) that Last Summer Before Everything Changes.

Even just the beginning of summer is always, for me, the trigger of flashbacks to summers past. There's something about the feel of the air, the quality of the light, that makes me feel a little bit lost in my own historical timeline. Maybe it's that magical summer sense that anything could happen - even waking up ten years ago. Maybe it's the extra hours of daylight that give the illusion of free time like you haven't known since high school vacation. Maybe this year it does seem more that way than ever before, and I'm just letting it all jumble in my brain.

Maybe it's the smells in my parents' house. Maybe it's the lack of obligations for three whole days (which feels like an enormous stretch of time).

Maybe it's an overwhelming desire to twist time into an endless loop, so what's so good right now never gets lost, that makes it so easy to forget what day it is, what year it is.

Wishful Thinking

I wish I could make the mail arrive faster.
I wish I could rearrange geography.
I wish I could fix the things that upset my friends. I wish I could do more to help.
I wish I could see the future, just for a second.
I wish I would get a check in the mail for a million dollars, tax free.
I wish I could park my car for more than fifteen minutes, anywhere, without worrying about getting ticketed or towed.
I wish I didn't hate how I spend half my waking hours.
I wish I could worry less about everything and everyone.
I wish people could and would just say things, without all the complications.
I wish the weather could be perfect more than three days a year.
I wish my phone wasn't starting to suck just a little.
I wish I could spend more time with the people that matter to me.
I wish the places where I feel truly safe were places I could stay and not just pass through.
I wish there was less waiting.
I wish I was too busy with all the good stuff....