Tuesday, August 4, 2009

I wanna go back on vacation

I'm being silly, of course. I'm retired; I don't have "vacations" any more, unless you count the ones from Sunday to Saturday every week of the year.

But being on vacation at home is quite different from being on vacation at my dad's in Florida. And even though it was hot, hot, hot and humid, humid, humid – it was, after all, the last week of July in FLORIDA – I didn't feel like I had to be doing something chorelike all the time.

Since I've been home I've done all the things that make staying home and being retired not a vacation: laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, mowing, weed-eating, paying bills … y'all know what I'm talking about.

The best thing about being on vacation was spending a lot of one-on-one time with my dad. We went to the pharmacy at Patrick AFB twice – a lot of car time – and we went to three doctor's appointments – a lot of waiting-room time. We also went out for breakfast (his favorite restaurant meal) almost every day I was there and in the evenings we watched documentaries about Presidents Truman and Roosevelt. I felt like an old person, and I was very comfortable. Heh.

I managed to keep up, and even exceeded, my walking-five-miles-a-day plan. On Sunday afternoon I blithely thought I could make it four times around the perimeter of Dad's neighborhood. I could only do it twice, because, um, did I mention it was hot? The remaining walks began earlier and earlier each morning. Thank goodness for streetlights, as I was out well before sunrise the rest of the week.

Five trips around the 'hood ended up being 6.8 miles. The total for the week was more than 37 miles, which made up for both Sunday's short walk and this past Saturday, when I was flying home and didn't walk at all. Yay, me!

And I only gained 1.5 pounds. Sigh.

The best thing about being home is, of course, the garden. And seeing my husband again! Hi, honey! I picked one zucchini that was more than a foot long. The weeds have completely taken over the squash section, so I'll have to work on that today. I picked enough zucchini Sunday to make and can six and a half pints of relish yesterday. We had stuffed zucchini boats (with our first ripe tomato chopped up in the filling) for dinner Sunday and fried okra last night. I also picked a couple of huge yellow squash (which will be soup for dinner tonight), along with onions and green beans.

As I may have mentioned before, I shoulda been a farmer.

3 comments:

Lori G. said...

I can understand why you would want to be on vacation with your dad. :-) Makes sense to me. But me, I would enjoy having the time off from work to do the chores around the house. So I'm envious of you in two ways: Florida and getting to stay at home. OTOH, I don't want to be at home yet (unless I win tonight's lottery). Glad your back!

Doc Manette said...

Sounds like you had a great time visiting with your dad! Having breakfast in a cafe with unlimited coffee used to be one of my favorite things to do with the girl when we still lived in Houston and her brother was at school. I will always treasure those days as I hope she will too.

You motivated me two weeks ago, to go and rake up the grass cuttings and put into the compost pile. My parents were looking at me like I was an alien.

denise said...

Welcome back! Always miss you when you're gone. Glad you had a good visit with your Dad.

So the weeds overtook the garden while you were away, yet hubby was home and surely weeding every day? Strange... ;-)

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