"vacation"

I had 15 days off of work. I had 12 days of full-time childcare when Trouble went to go visit family. Trouble needed to get away, so that was all cool. And I got to bond with my children. A lot.

It turns out that full time childcare is easier than my regular schedule of full time work and then childcare crammed around the edges. I am feeling mentally rested enough to feel like I want to tackle a whole lot of projects in the evenings of this upcoming rotation . . . which is crazy and impossible, really. Once I get started, I will be too tired to do any of these other things. It would be nice if my brain knew that, too.

It also helped that I had lots of adult back-up. I saw all sorts of in-town people I don't see enough of, we went to go visit some friends for the weekends, then two sets of out-of-town friends came through. It was fabulous to see everyone. Fabulous to have excuses to cook real meals for other adults. Fabulous to have adult help and people to talk to all night. Fabulous to get a few hours alone with the kids, too, during all of that; it felt like a treat to have some down time at home alone instead of having at home alone time feel like it is dragging on and on and I am pining to be around other adults.

I spent so much time away from my computer that I barely checked my email. And that was OK. I have spent enough time away from news that I don't have a bad visceral reaction to every news item I see. And that is OK. And I have some new music. And that is awesome. And I went shopping for my interview/work cloths today. And it makes me happy to have cloths I like. I'm turning into a girl?

And I am excited to return to work tomorrow, though I'm a bit concerned I will spend most of my time trying to stay organized instead of trying to learn what I want to learn. I am ready for the next thing, except that the next thing does not involve 15 day vacations, 12 of which are spent with my kids.

Older

I unearthed the pre-hacked version of this journal off of one of Trouble's harddrives the other day. Wow, I posted quite a lot . . . it was quite nice to go back and get to read little random things here and there that I had entirely forgotten. I'm not sure I'm up for having that sort of pace again, but I'm almost inspired enough to try.

Today is Trouble's birthday. Turing did a fabulous job of keeping his present to Trouble a surprise until the actual unwrapping when he said, "Smell it, daddy! It smells like M&M's!"