No Break Christmas Break

I came back to work on Tuesday after a 10-day Christmas Vacation.  That’s right,  I had 10 paid days off of work.  Working in higher ed can be pretty sweet sometimes.  (I also get free haircuts at the beauty school, but that can be risky business.) 

I started working full time at SLCC a year ago.  Even though I got hired for the position in December, I think they purposely set my start date as January 1 so they wouldn’t have to pay me for Christmas break.  I was bummed out, but I started postulating my plans for the next year.  I figured with a whole week off and no distractions, I could accomplish just about anything. (I have always held the belief that if I had two weeks alone in a room I could write an entire album or maybe a children’s book.  I probably overestimate my creativity.) 

There was one thing I wasn’t thinking about when I was making my plans back then – parenthood.  All plans erased. 

The 10 days at home gave me an idea what Traci’s life is like.  Difficult.  It is amazing to me how a child that only weighs eight pounds can take up so much space – she has her own room, her stuff takes up half the living room and the entire backseat of the car – and require so much energy.   

I didn’t write an album, I didn’t write a children’s book. I barely left my living room.  I think there were at least five days that I didn’t even change out of my pajamas.  That’s not to say that the week was uneventful.  I was able to get Paige up to speed on The OC.  We watched 27 episodes in four days, knocking out the entire first season.  Just like her mother, she finds Marissa Cooper to be unbearably stupid at times. 

Paige also had her theatrical debut starring as none other than Baby Jesus in “The Nativity,” directed by my dad.  It was a star-studded affair, featuring my two 3-year-old nephews as wise men and my 1-year-old nephew as a donkey (he already had an Eeyore costume).  Traci played Mary of course.  I thought I was a shoo-in for the part of Joseph, but my dad, El Capitan, said that we didn’t need a Joseph.  He wasn’t that important.   

So now I’m back at work, realizing it is a lot easier to be here than at home.  Let the real vacation begin…