My Solo Vacation

I've been working at the university for 6 years now and have taken a total of
7 weeks vacation.  2 weeks have been close to real vacations, one to
Pennsylvania, Washington DC and New York and one to Ontario for a family
wedding.  I took 3 weeks for the birth of my son and the other 2 were to
study for exams.

I'm given 3 weeks' holidays every year but lose them unless I specifically
request that they be held for another year.  I haven't done that and it's
actually a good thing since I'd still have close to 10 weeks to take off. 
As it is, my new job has resulted in a lot of overtime and I have to take it as
time off.  That's another 8 weeks that I need to fit in by the end of
March. Don't really know how I'm going to do it, but the temptation to add it to
an education leave has been there.  Trying to get any "ME" stuff done
around the house is virtually impossible and I find that I'm retreating to my
sister's place on numerous occasions to handle the stress and just to have some
"me-time."

I'm on a week's holidays right now and headed north to my parent's home in
the north Okanagan.  Why?  I can't afford to go anywhere else and I
can justify going solo to my parents.  It's thinking time for me and I can
rely on my parents' wisdom with issues in my life.

I laugh as I write "parents' wisdom" as they've never been good at dispensing
wisdom in the past.  In fact, my father's wisdom when I was buying the
house was to hold off on cashing my Bell shares for a few more days to take
advantage of the dividend cheque worth $300.  I waited a few days, got the
dividend cheque and went to cash in shares that had dropped nearly 20% from the
date I'd originally intended to cash them.  So, I earned $300 and lost over
$5000 on the shares. 

My parents wisdom also helped out my sister years ago when she debated moving
to Australia for a year.  She'd pretty much talked herself out of it, but
my parents insisted that she look at her options for work and friends at home at
look at the bigger picture.  They finally convinced her that moving would
be a good idea and when she announced her plans, they blasted her with
everything she hadn't planned out.  It's probably the first time I ever
felt sorry for my sister and she stood in the doorway sobbing with confusion. 
It wasn't the first time I yelled at my parents, but it was the first time to
defend my sister.

But if there's one thing my parents seem to have done right it's marriage. 
They've been married for 35 years and seem to still lvoe each other.  They
drive each other crazy but you can still see something there.

I think I've lost that 'something' in my own marriage and need their wisdom. 
I need to know what my 2004 should look like and I think they can help me with
that.  I know it's going to be a year with changes --I just don't know how
many changes there will be.

So, I'm here for the week.  I come home on Friday (with my parents in
tow) and try to have an abnormal 'family Christmas' over the weekend.  I'm
cooking turkeys for a Christmas lunch for Union Gospel Mission for Saturday. 
I'm going to the university Christmas party on Saturday night and hoping to
recover in time for a family Christmas dinner on Sunday.