Why I shouldn’t take vacations

Adam and I were in the car on the long ride up to Canada. (As an aside, Thane is begging to go to Canada for his birthday “just like you and dad did”.) As so often happens when I finally relax and momentarily get off the hamster wheel of my daily life, I started to think. This is a mistake. Because given a good night’s sleep and no immediately pressing pending tasks, I start inventing things we’ll do when I get back. I have some sort of amnesia about how little time I have (especially during the fall).

For your entertainment, here are a few things that I came up with for us to do in that languid week on the Bay of Fundy:

1) Redo the living room
We spent a lot of time talking about what we’ll do with our house. It was built in 1898, and the last major renovation was in the 1970s. That ’70s renovation was… not good. These were not choices I’m glad they made (although it probably kept the house affordable for us). Specifically, almost every room in the first two floors has a drop ceiling and cheap wood paneling. We ripped it out of Thane’s room – a project that Adam took two full weeks (between jobs). We have a Google doc full of all the projects we’d LIKE to do. (The stupid windows. I can’t figure out what we should do. We got three contractors in and they each recommended something different, with estimates between 7k and 20k. So I’m doing the mature thing and ignoring it for another year. Also, I think next year we will put the second full bathroom in the attic and turn it into a master suite.)

But somehow we landed on the brilliant idea that we would renovate the dining room. (I think that is mostly because one of our gamers has a commitment that will make gaming hard for several weeks, so it’s an opportune time.) It sounds simple – we’ll pull down the drop ceiling and the wood paneling (which, in a brilliant design decision doesn’t run all the way to the real ceiling because it was put up the same time as the drop ceiling. We’ll re-drywall the ceiling (or a tin ceiling?! maybe with crown molding?) and walls (there’s likely horsehair plaster back there, and its unlikely to be in good condition). We’ll put the trim back on, prime and paint, and voila! Beautiful dining room! Of course, this involves moving all the furniture in the room, which includes the heaviest stuff in the whole house. (To … somewhere else….) And likely weeks of double shifts for Adam. And we’re not sure how we’ll handle the curves in the archways. But it’ll be great!

2) Invite my brother to come live with us for a while
My brother is wrapping up his current church contract in Denver. While he’s working on discerning his next call, we’re looking forward to having him here for a while. He’s wisely planned his schedule so he should be here shortly after we finish getting the dining room redone. I can’t wait to see him again!

3) Decide once and for all if my children need a piano
We inherited a piano from Adam’s grandmother. I play piano, poorly. But given a choice, I’d rather plan trumpet mediocrely, or guitar poorly. Heck, I might even prefer to play cornetto abysmally. For a long time we hung on to it in that fond hope that one of our sons might be musically inclined. Those sons are now 9 and 6 and it’s put up or play wind instruments time. So I’m thinking of trying a 4 week piano lesson for each of them. At the conclusion of those 4 weeks, we’ll either have a kid who seems actually interested in practicing music, or we’ll get rid of the piano.

4) Chair a church committee
OK, this wasn’t actually a vacation decision, but it did kick off this week. My church is getting ready to do our mission study in preparation for discerning who we are, what God is calling us to do, and who the neighbor is that we should be loving. I’ll be part of that discernment process. I’ve taken a few years off church committees, and this marks my dive back in.

There are a few more things, but those are the high points. I am looking ahead to fall – the busiest time of my year – and trying to figure out what I can do RIGHT NOW in order to save myself having to do it in September/October!

What brilliant ideas did you come up with on your vacation?