Yesterday, two of my co-workers left town on separate vacations to destinations of varying degrees of exoticness. Most of the kids with whom we work are also on fall break from school, so this is an easy time to use vacation time without much risk of falling severely behind or missing lots of super fun meetings. Due to my latest stint (can I call it a stint if it’s eternal in both directions?) of big living and what I lovingly refer to as “hemorrhaging money” on #FOMO in any of its charming forms, I opted for the fall break stay-cation. It wasn’t an opting as much as a stumbling into a weekend at home while everyone is away. Why take vacation days when I can very easily go to work? I’d much rather save those up for times when I literally can’t bide my time in the office making playlists or searching for standard poodles who are waiting on me, their perfect forever human mom, to bring them home. Today would be easy. There’s not that much to do because we don’t have any programs this weekend. I could look ahead and do some planning, but I can also just proceed as I normally do: creating a schedule so loose that I don’t even feel comfortable sharing it with anyone, lest someone hold me to it, and then going week-to-week because who has time to plan?  No need for that. Gotta leave room for the Spirit, am I right? 

Lots of need—turns out—for hours of talking and drinking coffee with my friend on her birthday, employing the autumnal two-hand-mug-grip as the morning light moved through my living room in a way I hadn’t witnessed in quite a while. Lots of need to spend one of my two hours in the office today downstairs celebrating a ridiculous excuse for cake known as Boss’s Day. I interrupted another co-worker who was actually doing things to talk about what’s new. That was important and good. I really need a new door because my basement door broke last week and is not secure and I really needed to take care of that because it is a safety issue and because I am an adult and when things are broken, I am obligated to pay a lot of money so that they can be fixed by someone who knows how to fix things. I couldn’t actually pay for the slab of wood that will eventually replace the broken door because I really needed to leave Home Depot in order to get to my movie that was starting at 4:20. Upon my timely arrival, I needed to get some popcorn and a beer because all I’d eaten that day was a handful of Wheat Thins for breakfast and that slice of Patriarchy Awareness Day carrot cake. And I think it’s really important that I sit here at one of my favorite restaurants sipping another beer and observing the pedestrian traffic passing right beyond my laptop screen while I tap on the keys and remember another time when I sat in this exact spot and wept as I wrote true words that may or may not have been an appropriate response to the assignment. I see myself in the reflection of the window and my hair is wild and I love my new earrings and I found that tube of lip gloss that I thought had been swallowed up by a crevice in my car and I am beautiful and glad to be here– glad to be out in the world and doing things that are grand, and glad that I won’t be reprimanded for seizing a day off from all the things I was being paid to do today.* Really, really glad. 

*Okay, so I’ll probably mark it down as a half day.