fine whine

As the end of the year rolls around (as 2005 just did, you may recall) I always seem to have a surplus of vacation days stored up. Our paid time off combines all sick, personal and vacation time into one big chunk from which I would take any one at a time... except that I haven't been sick enough to skip work in many a year, don't know what constitutes a personal day, and don't take enough vacations. So I end up taking days here and there just to use them up, making long weeekends sometimes and other times merely breaking up the weeks.

Occasionally the days I take off come in handy, such as when roof work needs to be done, or someone needs to give our treadmill its yearly checkup (and susbsequent motor replacement). In those cases I have an appointment of sorts (even if it is just a vague "before noon" or worse) but often no idea of what else I should be doing. Especially when the technician/repair person shows up. Should I be doing housework? Sometimes I wash dishes, but few is the work that takes less time than I use washing dishes. Most of the time I'm left with the question of what else to do. Not wanting to bother them, I leave the workers alone, and hide out elsewhere in the house with a book, or play video games.

Sometime I'd like to ask one of them what other people at home do during work visits. Maybe I can get a pointer or two.

Yesterday, however, we weren't having any work done, but I was still left with the sense that I shouldn't be just sitting around. I think I've had too many days off lately, and developed some weird form of cabin fever wherein I'm completely capable of leaving the house but feel like I've got nowhere to go. So I washed a few dishes, vaccuumed one room, and in the end wound up cutting and sewing some curtains for our dining room. I meant to use it as a teaching kind of thing for Jessica* but she was doing other things and I didn't stop to try and get her to work with me. All in all the curtains came out okay, and they needed to be put together and hung, but to be honest, I still felt like I was supposed to be at work and instead was just doing busywork at home. I guess I need to get out more.

* I was lucky enough to have taken Home Economics classes in eighth grade, in which, among other things, I excelled at sewing. Or at least poking needle holes in paper in very straight lines, as most of the class time we didn't have thread or fabric to work with. It was somewhat like algebra or calculus, in that both are 'math' but it takes some time before you can actually use the numbers. Or something like that.