Get No Vacation

It’s vacation.  But I get no vacation.  Spring break’s a bit broke from the full-on home office cellblock.  The kids are up but they aren’t out.  Everyone is walking around whimsically, slowly.  I know this is a terribly grumpy old-man thing to say, but they seem to get a lot of vacations.  They get Christmas, then they get Chinese New Year, now they get “spring break.”  We’d had it rougher, we did.  Our family had gone on a proper vacation last month for Chinese New Year.   We most assuredly ain’t going nowhere, this time.  This despite the fact that “the Jones’” and everyone else from the kids’ world is off somewhere alluring for the next week.

I went to the gym.  The middle-aged lady at the desk is usually glum.  It is a rather glum gig.  If I’m not feeling glum myself, I’m usually as chatty with her as a sign-in process will allow.  Today she gestured to a large binder.  She suggested I should enter a comment. “Good or bad.”  The comment or two before was about a broken rowing machine or a troublesome staff person.  I considered what annoyance I might contribute.  I wrote something about how the staff at this desk was always very helpful.  Then I told her as much and this elicited an unexpected smile.

Back home, great things were underway.  The kids had begun the Herculean-stables-like challenge of cleaning their rooms.  One gets the sense that this could involve much more than this day.  My wife began full-gestation challenge of cleaning up the dusty back yard. It all felt very spring like, but I’d pre-packed my Monday as a regular workday.  Another call on the hour.  Calling, typing out emails, with all this activity afoot, right outside my window, I can only feel guilty and disconnected.   

“I want to visit my friend.”  “I presume you want to leave immediately?”  A car ride will do me good, on this sunny day.  My maximum-exertion mix from the gym is preloaded on my phone.  “You play a song and I’ll play a song.”  “ OK.”  She puts on something I haven’t heard before called “New York Go Easy on Me” by the Chain Smokers.   I tried to dig it and some of it was digable.  Then I played “London’s Burning” and successfully resisted the urge to provide a long editorial on the first Clash album.  “Make falafel for dinner”  “OK.  I’ll see you at 6:30.”  On the ride home CS&N’s “Judy Blue Eyes” came on and I turned the dial to forty, which is the highest it will go in a Honda Odyssey, and I rolled down the widows to sing along haphazardly as one does on a sunny day of hooky from work and spring cleaning.

Full-gestation challenge