All In A Day's Vacation

Never mind about coming over for a slice of pie. For one, it's gone now. Secondly, our house personifies "organized disaster" at the moment. There are a few corners, just in this living room alone, in which I'd rather not be caught in a fire drill. The whole effect might give you the (false) impression that we are not on vacation.

I think I've had a taste of every kind of vacation in my life. The road-trip-motel combo, the airplane-amusement park combo, the stay-at-home-and-take-local-day-trips combo, the camping-adventure, and even the guess-we-won't-bother-with-vacation-this-year non-adventure. And then there's the working-vacation combo. Now that is what I call redeeming the time.

One year, we spent our working vacation putting in grass in the back yard. It was October and the ground was frozen. While we were hard at work in an icy cold windstorm, a falling tree almost caught Mom underneath it. After expressing gratefulness that she was still alive, we went back to work while the wind howled and finished our job for the day. It was one of the best vacations we ever had.

This year, we have enjoyed a significantly warmer, but much less orderly, working adventure. We call it "unpacking," mostly because it IS unpacking. If you ever find yourself moving with any great frequency and leaving your belongings in storage for extended periods of time, you also may find yourself unmotivated to unpack your belongings as soon as you move into a new home. Some items we own have literally not been outside of a box for five years or more.

So, you may ask, why keep such belongings?

We wonder the same thing, and our last week of vacation has been well used in reboxing many items. This time, for the thrift store. Hooray for purging!