I am envious of you, Sue.

Somehow I managed not to take any vacation this summer, and now there is no time. I have Monday off for a "team-building retreat" with University HR at the theatre. I am going for the LOLs. I hae Thursday off to clean the costume shop. And then, on to the school year.

I started blocking all my time suck sites at work, and I am getting a lot done, but I am BORED. I can't wait until I hire a student so I have someone to talk to!

Also, in weird "green" news, I forgot my cloth grocery bag today, so I bought a new one at the store. The cashier put the cloth bag in a plastic bag.

Our housekeeper (yes. we have a housekeeper. Go ahead. Judge but clean floors are worth it)

Dh talks gardener -- I'd pay a house keeper long before I'd pay a gardener

Almost everything in my house is put away! It's a miracle.

Go, Sue

This is the week of vacation I took this summer. I may take another week in September and go hang out with my folks.

Go, Sue

Actually, I forgot about the basement, where things go to be ignored. It's a mess. It's only this tidy because my sister's were visiting and I was away. It's only been 24 hours since I've been home. I haven't done that much damage yet.

I do need to do a clutter purge.

I'd happily do someone else's gardening if they'd clean my house.

I've taken 1 day of vacation this year. This may be why work is currently driving me batshit.

Of course, in my rage yesterday, J and I started messing around with the Big Boss's crazy cover ideas and I inadvertently designed the cover of my latest project.

People TAKE YOUR VACATION!!!! good gravy.

Sophia, just take a day midweek sometime so you can leisurely go to the grocery store or anywhere else that is out of the way by bus.

Watermelon balls for dessert. Earlier in the week we had strawberry shortcake and I got red-i-whip and let mac do his own. MUCH FUN! These are my attempts to add whimsy to our regular life.

Sue, I'm impressed! Nothing in our house ever gets put away to our satisfaction.

The ball pit causes extreme dissension. Noah doesn't want to leave home now.

This weekend is a trip to the Skirball for Noah's Ark and the circus aerialists.

We've also almost worked out how to get the rest of Grace's feeding supplies. Seriously. It's been 3 months.

Well, I'm taking 3 days off to go to Toronto Labor Day weekend. But that will still leave all 3 weeks from this year unused.

I don't mind carrying over a bunch though because I have to use a couple of weeks to see family in France in March and that's not really vacation, despite the location.

Man, it's been a day.

Boss #1 is overworked, harried and generally grumpy.

Boss #2 is overworked, harried and completely stressed out, and has been forgetting stuff left and right but hasn't been around enough for me to follow up on any of it with her, but thank God she's extremely nice about the forgettery and when she's actually here is totally cooperative about letting me pin her down, shove a bunch of papers in her face, and say, "Sign here, fill this in, tick this tickybox, sign, sign, tick, yes, no, now give it all back to me."

Boss #3 is an overentitled professionally helpless adult child who is driving my Very Young Coworker to drink, and driving everyone else to earnestly desire to punch him in the nuts. VYC and I had to suffer through a miserable chain of "I can't believe this calendar is so screwed up, why was I left out of the loop?" emails culminating in him calling me to fume about her while I sat there four feet from her (NOT ON, Bossman) and whining about being left out of the loop while I pulled up email after scrupulously datestamped email proving that he had, in fact, been in the loop for months and months, he had just chosen to ignore it. And then he said, "Well, you can't expect me to always read my email every day. I'm not that kind of a guy."

!!!

Shit I Did Not Say: If you can't be bothered to read emails addressed to you with subject lines like "SEPTEMBER CALENDAR: PLEASE REVIEW," you are probably not competent to function in the adult world.

Shit I Also Did Not Say: You are truly the laziest fucking man on the entire fucking planet, aren't you?

Shit I Actually Did Write In A Subsequent Email: I will make sure from now on to print up all emails pertaining to calendar or scheduling questions, highlight the relevant sections, and make sure that you verbally respond after physically reading the actual words by passing your eyeballs across the physical paper.

To which, after about an hour, he responded with an email to half the division that blathered on about scheduling issues for a bit but whose subtext was clearly: On thorough review and reflection I have come to realize that I was completely full of shit and could not have been more wrong if I'd tried and now I am excruciatingly embarrassed, although I'll be goddamned if I actually admit that I'm sorry.