Vacation, For Them

Very early tomorrow morning my wife, my mother-in-law, and my two little ones are leaving on a 10-day vacation.

Me, I’m going to work. I’m also going to work all next week, with the national holiday July 4th excepted, of course.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m sad I’m not joining them. I need time off, too, despite having a week off last month to go overseas. But I’m only in this job not quite eight months, and have no PTO accrued. So I leave the house at 8 to slave in the cubicle mines and get home by 6 in the evening. Such is my existence.

I will be coming home to a quiet house for 10 days straight. Now, don’t get me wrong on this point – at first I will love it. I will savor the quiet. I will enjoy the solitude. I will thrill to the lack of “Hey Daddys” and the absence of crying and whining and fighting. I will be able to eat what I want, when I want, and I will only be cooking for and cleaning after myself.

In other words, I will be a bachelor for 240 hours.

Yet this is all ephemeral. Sooner than I like to think (I’m wagering by Sunday night), the loneliness will creep in. I will go from room to room, reminiscing about the times there were actual children playing within them. Well, that might be a tad bit histrionic, but the quiet will guilt me. Why wasn’t I a better dad, it will say to me. And I will say, I am, I just need time off, too!

Don’t weep for me, though. I will survive. I will speak to my children and my wife every night. I will go with my buddy to see Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. I will have plenty of human contact during the eight or nine hours every day I’m at work – perhaps too much.

I plan on keeping busy. Aside from my standard chores and the honey-do list, I want to finish the WW2 history book I’m reading and watch the World War 2 In Color episodes I DVR’d off the military channel. Don’t know why I’m fascinated about this topic, but since it follows so closely on the heels of my interest in the Civil War, I’m thinking it has something to do with my new-found awareness of mortality. Some men my age buy Corvettes; others leave their wives for trophy women. I study warfare and ask myself how I would fare in those soldiers’ shoes.

That Hidden Meaning of the Lord of the Rings DVD arrived a few days ago, and I’ll watch one every night. Might even start re-reading the trilogy if I am so moved – I’m leaving that an open question to my fickle whims. Of course I’ll blog every evening and – who knows? – I might even go for a walk if the weather’s bearable. I gotta lose a bit of my heft to fit into my work golf shirts.

Weep not for the Hopper, children! Many a page shall be turned this next half-a-week-and-week!