My Summer Vacation By CC

When I was a kid the writing assignments I dreaded the most were “My Summer Vacation.”  I would try and try and try to remember things so my paper would be the most exciting. Then we would go back to school and I would write about playing softball, swimming, going to my grandparents during harvest or working cattle.  We never really went on big, fancy trips.  We lived in Texas during my growing up years, and it really is a whole ‘nother country.  It is amazing the adventures you can have and the places you can see and never leave the state.

Then I got older, not really grown up, but older, and my mother found me the neatest job, The Grand Canyon.  I worked at The Ditch for two summers.  It’s where I decided I wanted to work in museums and where I learned a few other things about real life.  You can probably figure them out, but I’m not going to admit them on the internet.

The summers after that I was in summer school then I graduated and having no money would have been a step up from where I was so traveling was out.  Did some local camping trips and the like but nothing major.

Fast forward a few years and I’m working full time but not full enough to get things like paid vacation and I’m working three jobs, a pretty good indicator none of them paid diddly.

A few years later and I finally have a “real” job with paid vacation and everything.  So how do I spend my vacation time? Going home to see the family of course.

Now we’re at today, or at least in the neighborhood of today, and I finally realized.  I have earned that vacation time and I can use it to benefit me.  Yep, sometimes I’m a little slow.  So, I went to Portland, then up to Seattle, ate chocolate and bbq, drank wine and beer, and ended up drunk dialing a few friends.  Went to Bellingham on the train and was so close to the ocean I could have reached out and touched it if those dang sealed windows weren’t in the way.  I even saw a baby black bear cub and waved to Canada, or at least the security cameras on the border.

It wasn’t a romantic get away and the adventures I had were relatively tame, but oh boy, it was a very good thing.

In a few hours I’m leaving on a plane for the second time this summer.  The trip is going to be different.  No sleeping late and relaxing and getting drunk at wine and beer tastings.  It’s a family thing.  It’s going to be good.  I’m going to get to see my daddy and my sister and the world’s cutest nephew are going to be there.  My folks are mainly settled into their new house and the old one has become a holding ground for all things destined for the mother of all garage sales.  My mother hasn’t decided if it is good for us to come home or not, in fact I think we pretty much told her we were coming.  I’m not sure why my sister chose Oklahoma in July but there you are so there I’m going.

And where have I been in between the PNW and melting in OK? I’ve been melting in CO.  And cleaning house.  And hiding my head in the sand.

Talk to y’all later.  I’m going flying soon and I don’t have clean undies for the trip.

115 comments July 15th, 2008