My vacation countdown clock says 5 days left till the start of my vacation. The paper chain the girls and I made still has 8 links because we keep forgetting to take a link off (what is up with that?) and all this together means that I not only have 4 work days to update everyone on projects that need covering while I’m gone, but I also need to find time to scour the house (I hate coming home to a messy house!), arrange care for Joey, our pet chinchilla, stop mail, stop newspaper, and oh yeah, pack!
To be fair, I’ve already done some of those things. Belle’s classroom will be taking pet duty for us – score, free pet sitter! And I’ve already submitted the card to the post office and stopped the paper online. Which we only get on Sundays anyway, but since we’ll be gone two Sundays, it definitely needed to be done!
Work, which has been relatively slow the past 2-3 weeks, took a dramatic turn the other way today. Figures. Two projects which had been on semi-permanent hold for months are brewing, and will require some heavy duty attention while I’m gone. Sorry teammates! Hey, I’d do it for you!
And I’m really, really looking forward to our week away. We’ll be meeting our friends in Florida for 9 nights, and when we get back I’m taking an extra week off work to recover from my vacation. My first ever two-weeks-in-a-row vacation.
Oh, and the day after we get back, Krystal starts 2nd grade, so we are also scrambling to make sure she’s ready for that!
Niceties and Nasties from New England 
We’ve decided to go back to the beach as well in September, and the Mountain Man is franctically trying to get stuff done. He has two out-of-town conferences between now and then, and has finally hired all the new staff he needed (after being short-staffed since June 1). Our cat-dog tender is busy getting a house built far away from us, so this may be our last vacation of pet-sitting in exchange for a case of beer.
I try to clean the house before we go, but I’m just happy if I don’t find cat poop on the bed when we return. (That has happened.)
And I think you’re VERY smart to take some days off at home after you get back. The vacation itself is fine, but all that driving back completely kills whatever relaxation you got.