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.