Vacay sweet vacay!

For the first time since last October, I am taking a few days off.

I am notorious for not taking vacation. I think it comes from my years as a temp -- a "permanent temp," mind you. If you didn't work, you didn't get paid. And while it was a nice living wage, it wasn't enough to afford me the luxury of too much time off. I needed every single hour of pay I could get.

So I got in the habit back then. I worked as much as they would allow and sometimes more. And the company had devised a way that we got paid for 40, but worked every other Friday and had every other Friday off. Hey, fine by me.

When I worked for the church, I had no idea how much vacation I was due. And my boss was good about giving us time off whenever we needed it. I was actually forced to take vacation one year. I asked for a half-day off (to travel to Savannah) and was told not to come back for a week -- since I couldn't decide on my own vacation time, he was deciding for me. Boy, was I upset about that!

My last "real" vacation -- where I had a semblance of a schedule, but easily changed if needed -- was ten years ago, when I went to Colorado. I went to Jackson, MS in 2005, but that was a little more structured. And yeah, I do weekends here and there to visit friends, but I either take just a half-day or I hustle like hell to get there after work.

I had 2 vacation days that carried over. This is the last year we will be able to do that, and so far, I'd only taken 1.5 days. One of those was for the ice storm, and the other half-day because I had a rotten afternoon (sick dog, cut tire, etc.) But not an actual do-nothing day. Even holidays aren't really holidays, because you have just that one day and everyone else is off and ..... well, it just doesn't feel like a day off.

So right now, I'm just chillaxing. I'm going to take a few more vacay days in October, but not sure exactly when yet. I do know that I'm looking forward to that!