Monday, Day 1:
I awoke early out of habit. Every woman knows the vacation doesn’t start until you’re alone in the house.
Bubba: Maybe I should take the day off.
Me: No, you have to go to work.
Bubba: You don’t want me to stay home with you?
Me: You’ve been home with me all weekend. You go get ready for work.
I had no idea how much goes on here between the time I leave for work and the time he leaves for work. There are power drinks, moving of furniture, setting aside of animals . . . and then the workout videos come on. There is grunting, and panting, and a lot of testosterone build-up.
I spent this time dividing my life into 8 segments on a pad of legal paper:
Personal
Finance
Physical Health
Home
Recreation
Family
Career
Mental Health
This gives me guideline for goal setting, something I’m not very good at. There is one area I have deliberately decided to avoid; career. I’m on vacation, for crying out loud! Even though this would be a great time to update my resume and LinkedIn profile, I just don’t feel the need to wreck my whole week by thinking about work for one minute.
With this in mind, I made a list longer than I could accomplish in a month of Sundays, and set out to chip away at it. My car was in getting some work done ($500 worth), so I began puttering around the house.
Puttering is something I am practicing just in case I retire before I die. The following items were checked off my list:
- Fix Bed Caster
- Make Oat Bran Muffins
- Move the Fake Plant
- Make an XBox Profile
- Steam Clean the Couch
- Watch the Netflix Movie I’ve had for two months.
- Tear the Bed Apart and Wash the Bedskirt, Mattress Pad, and Freshen the Pillows
- 30 Minutes of Yoga
You may or may not be aware that I am working on the transition to some natural cleaning products. This requires some experimentation. I have decided that I like vinegar for cleaning the kitchen floor, shining faucets, and possibly as a fabric softener when sprayed on a damp washcloth and thrown in with the load. However, I have to be extremely careful around Bubba’s things. He has a twitchy nose. I was very careful not to use vinegar on any of his things in the laundry. And yet, this conversation took place at bedtime:
Bubba: (Sniffing)
Me: What? What are you smelling?
Bubba: (Sniffing the blankets, then the pillows, then the mattress)
Me: (Defensively) What? What is wrong?
Bubba: (Crawling across bed to sniff me)
Me: I didn’t wash anything you’re sniffing. What do you smell?
Bubba: I smell vinegar.
Me: OK, I didn’t wash anything you’re sniffing with vinegar.
Bubba: Ok. (Sniffing the blankets)
Me: WHAT? I don’t smell anything! Go to sleep!
