A vacation for everyone. Yes, everyone.

My parents are right now on their way to Florida to visit relatives. For two weeks.

That pleasant sensation you are feeling right now, just by casting your eyes on this blog? Well, that's what serenity feels like, my friends.

Now look, before you get the wrong idea, let me say that I love my parents. Very much. Love them with a capital L and also don't want to think about the inevitable day in which I no longer have them around.

But.

My parents are retired. My dad for a little over six years, my mom for just about three. They have forgotten, I think, what it's like to be a (relatively) young person who has to work, to sing for their supper. And the world that I inhabit, well, it's not the world that they knew. In the world they knew, you went to work for The Man, and The Man set you up a pension plan, and you stayed there for 40 years or until you died and The End. You got regularly-scheduled raises, two weeks of paid vacation, and health insurance. Talk about your golden apples.

My parents pretty regularly shake their heads at me and my situation, how I have none of the traditional perks of gainful employment and yet still manage to work for the same people day in and day out. Sure, I've gotten shat upon, but at this point in the game it's more about the money (what little there is) than it's about the golden apples.

And of course since they don't quite "get" what it is that I'm doing, they seem to think that I've got all the time in the world. Well, sure, if you count commuting, I've got lots of down time. So they put a lot of extra pressure on me to do stuff for them and to make extra trips on their behalf, and then they're mystified as to why I get peevish sometimes. It's especially tough when they start planning one of their trips, because I think they forget that just because their life locally is being put on hold, mine is still stroking along at full speed, as always.

It's always like this in the days before they go off on a trip: my dad will get super-involved in a project of some sort and work like a madman to complete it before departure, while my mother will start to wring her hands about all the Stuff she has to get done before they leave, and how she really doesn't want to go, and then before I know it somehow she's focused in on some character flaw of mine and suddenly she's all on my case about something.

I really do love them but they make me crazy.

So the first few days of them being gone is a little weird, but at the same time liberating. Sure, I have to reorder my days a bit, because they help me out by picking Spawn up from school a couple of days a week, but it's also very nice to not have to be nice. I can really hunker down and get some stuff done while they're gone.

To take this a few steps further, my husband also gets a little break because I'm getting my stuff done and that's making me a little easier to deal with. And Spawn, though pining for grandparental company, also gets a perk or two that comes from Mom having some extra time and not so much clutter in her brain.

And when my parents get back they will be tanned and rested and very glad to be home, and all of us will have had a break from one another. What's not to love about that?




-- Mox