The DePaul's take a holiday
One of my favorite things about the new year is the tangible phenomenon of vacation days.
I'm blessed by the mercy of my employer and the fruits of my sometimes hard labor to have fifteen days a year to do with what I wish. Last year I used number 15 in early November, so for six weeks I stumbled through the no-more-time-off-the-rest-of-the-year-except-for-company-mandated-holidays fog. I got the two Thanksgiving days and the two Christmas days, but that took the edge off feeling like I got away with something by being off work when everybody else was too.
And then that December miracle occurred, when at 11:59:59 I went from zero to fifteen in one second, a quantum leap attributable to the labor laws and the aroma of capitalism that we in this great country so deeply inhale.
So I have now before me a clean slate, and I don't know what to do.
We haven't a proper holiday in years, me and the missus. Oh, we've been places. Near and far. Round the world. But not for lezhure (pardon my French). This year we vow to change that; we've just not decided how.
Lovett wants to go to Ireland, of all places. He likes the countryside and castle pictures in the bookstore guidebooks, which shocks me because we have to threaten him with a tazer just to go outside to the curb with the garbage can in tow. (Just kidding about the tazer. It's not plugged in. Please don't tell Lovett.) And he wants to hike the Irish countryside. There is hope.
Dora, my hiker and lower-life-form researcher, has more metropolitan aspirations. When she sees photos of the "Eyepull" Tower, she wants to jet to Paris and stand under it in the spot where Zelda and I phoned her and Lovett when she was too little to understand during our whirlwind, 10-hour tour of the City of Lights. She learned that the "Statue of Livery" is in New York City, so she wanted to go there "really bad" until she watched the inauguration on TV and learned that Lovett walked the hallowed halls of our nation's capitol before she was born, so guess where she wants to go now?
Zelda pines for the beach with book and journal, even though she knows how the sand chafes me and the sun entices my inner freckle, though I love the wind and the salt air and the food. But everybody in Birmingham goes to the beach, and the DePaul's strive to avoid what everybody else does (in our understated way, of course).
I'm claustrophobic, so a cruise sounds like punishment; our Baptist brethren would shun us were we to exhibit mouse-eared souvenirs, so Disney is out. Since the Concorde has retired, we'll probably stay on this side of the pond (sorry, Lovett).
So, dear readers, what say ye? Suggestions for my frugal, adventuresome, xenophilic, bookish clan?
I'm blessed by the mercy of my employer and the fruits of my sometimes hard labor to have fifteen days a year to do with what I wish. Last year I used number 15 in early November, so for six weeks I stumbled through the no-more-time-off-the-rest-of-the-year-except-for-company-mandated-holidays fog. I got the two Thanksgiving days and the two Christmas days, but that took the edge off feeling like I got away with something by being off work when everybody else was too.
And then that December miracle occurred, when at 11:59:59 I went from zero to fifteen in one second, a quantum leap attributable to the labor laws and the aroma of capitalism that we in this great country so deeply inhale.
So I have now before me a clean slate, and I don't know what to do.
We haven't a proper holiday in years, me and the missus. Oh, we've been places. Near and far. Round the world. But not for lezhure (pardon my French). This year we vow to change that; we've just not decided how.
Lovett wants to go to Ireland, of all places. He likes the countryside and castle pictures in the bookstore guidebooks, which shocks me because we have to threaten him with a tazer just to go outside to the curb with the garbage can in tow. (Just kidding about the tazer. It's not plugged in. Please don't tell Lovett.) And he wants to hike the Irish countryside. There is hope.
Dora, my hiker and lower-life-form researcher, has more metropolitan aspirations. When she sees photos of the "Eyepull" Tower, she wants to jet to Paris and stand under it in the spot where Zelda and I phoned her and Lovett when she was too little to understand during our whirlwind, 10-hour tour of the City of Lights. She learned that the "Statue of Livery" is in New York City, so she wanted to go there "really bad" until she watched the inauguration on TV and learned that Lovett walked the hallowed halls of our nation's capitol before she was born, so guess where she wants to go now?
Zelda pines for the beach with book and journal, even though she knows how the sand chafes me and the sun entices my inner freckle, though I love the wind and the salt air and the food. But everybody in Birmingham goes to the beach, and the DePaul's strive to avoid what everybody else does (in our understated way, of course).
I'm claustrophobic, so a cruise sounds like punishment; our Baptist brethren would shun us were we to exhibit mouse-eared souvenirs, so Disney is out. Since the Concorde has retired, we'll probably stay on this side of the pond (sorry, Lovett).
So, dear readers, what say ye? Suggestions for my frugal, adventuresome, xenophilic, bookish clan?
posted by Chris @ 9:39 PM
1 Piquant Remarks:
At 9:02 AM,
Rurality said…
Everybody goes to the beach, but not everybody goes to Dauphin Island. Sounds like your kids might want to go a little further afield tho. :)
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