Yeah, I’m not going to Cancun and winding up on “Teachers Go Wild” so don’t get too excited.  In fact, it is going to be one of those stay-cations, where I spend it catching up with neglected stuff.  I love my whirlwind life, but it causes me to let certain things go way too long.  Those things would fall under “not as much of a priority” on my to-do list, and I think it would probably be an interesting exercise to consider what those would be in my life as compared to someone else’s.  I will also be spending this five-day weekend doing things I cannot do when I am in full throttle, even though they are a priority.

On my first day off, I had an appointment for an oil change for my car at 7:00 a.m. (which turned out to be a $2000 repair job due to a broken exhaust pipe and new rear brakes. )  That is just a teeny bit early for a vacation day, I agree.  But I also had a 9:30 appointment at the hair salon for a badly needed remodel, and a lunch date for the birthday of a good friend (although I did not remember it was her birthday and just thought we were having lunch.  Sometimes my memory is a victim of my whirlwind- did I feel like a horse’s ass….),  and grocery shopping, cleaning, preparing for a craft for the entire kindergarten for the week we return, and errands to do.  Day 1 of the vacation…exhausting.

Today is Day 2.  I woke up at 7:45 for an 8:00 dentist appointment, and the only reason I slept so late is that one of the cats kept us up all night playing with something outside our bedroom door and I was too lazy to get up and throw her down the basement stairs and close the door.  I am going to visit with a dear friend in the city who is just out of the hospital, and am planning to cook a meal or two for her and her children.  Somewhere in the middle, I have to go to the paint store to purchase paint for the new bathroom and pick up free fabric samples for the kindergarten activity, do more errands and more cleaning, and get ready for the arrival of one of the girls and her bf and my mom on Friday.

 Day 3, Friday- a friend and former colleague who is thoroughly enjoying her retirement, is coming to lunch.  That gives me all morning to get stuff done.  Once she is here, we will chat the afternoon away; until mom shows up around 3 and then I have to cook a large meal so that when my daughter and her beau show up after struggling through traffic on I-95 from D.C. and arriving around 1 a.m., there will be a full meal waiting.

Saturday, we are heading north to New Hampshire to spend the Easter weekend with our other daughter and her boyfriend.  And his parents, and twenty-five of their closest friends who have no where to go and will join our “orphan” Easter celebration.  (We used to do an “orphan” Thanksgiving in Tucson before kids, and I am happy that she is continuing the tradition of opening up a celebration to those who live too far from home) I will be lugging a twelve pound ham, the makings for mac-n-cheese for thirty, Passover goodies that I never sent, and a variety of other items, up the coast.  We will spend Saturday night in Portsmouth, bar-hopping with the twenty-somethings, after dropping Grandma off at the hotel.  She will enjoy her one Buttery Nipple shot and that will be it for her.

And then Sunday, Easter, it is time to cook up a storm and have a feast.  We will miss our son, who is toiling away to finish up his college semester- start strong finish strong, son!  We will leave most of the clean-up to the young’uns as we have to drive back to New York and get up for work on Monday. 

I have a feeling I will need to go back to work so I can recover from having time off.