Dear Molly

I need some coaching on how to properly take a week off of work. Perhaps I need to define “work”? To be more clear then, I am taking the week off of my day job. I looked at the calendar and realized that thanks to some software upgrades and new purchases, April-June would not be great times to turn in an entire week of vacation. Of course, then we roll into the summer year end audit season which means that July-Sept are ALSO not the best months to take a full week either. So, basically at the spur of the moment I knew the only week I could take off was this one.

So, what have I done with this “found” time?

Well, the weekend that kicked it off was kind of shot to hell with the high school events. I believe that I adequately described why I considered it shot to hell earlier. Anyhow, after scooting out of the memorial brunch as fast as I could on Sunday, and after making sure there was food for the boys and that 15 was completing his homework, I did what I needed to do to clear my head of the icky feelings – I buried myself into a book. Out of My League by Dirk Hayhurst AKA, The Garfoose!

As with his first book, I absolutely loved this! I started reading it at around 4pm and finished it at a little after midnight. In between I had laughed, tweeted out some of my favorite lines and even shed a few tears. Bullpen Gospels was my favorite book of 2010 and I wouldn’t be surprised if Out of My League is my favorite of 2012. There IS stiffer competition this time around. Both my weekend TV boyfriend Chris Hayes and my all time favorite media hostess Rachel Maddow have books out this year. However, I doubt those two will be quite a sweet blend of goofy baseball stories and personal growth 🙂

The timing was perfect. Thanks to The Garfoose, my mind was in a much better place starting off the week. So what fun stuff have I done?

Spring Cleaning of course. My floors upstairs and downstairs haven’t looked this clean since I moved in. I Bissel cleaned the stairs and my bedroom (thank you barfing cats for all those green and yellow stains). I treated the downstairs pergo floors with Murphy’s Wood Oil. The long handled ceiling duster came out and spiders were displaced all around the house. 26 had chopped up a bunch of overgrown bushes on Saturday so I chopped up the debris more to fit it into our three garbage cans. Somehow he cut down just enough to fit those three – pretty clever eh?

I’ve watched/listened to more Content curation and SEO instructional videos. Wrote more pages and research topics for more blog posts. Prepared a tax return for a client. Met with Eve to discuss more potential website work for her clients that would translate to $ more quickly.

IOW – other than reading the book – I’ve pretty much worked while I took a week off of work!  I haven’t even gone for a run! Lord, I need help with this whole idea of vacations!! I need to write 2 articles today and then (yay!) there is a one hour run planned for later.

Tomorrow afternoon 15 has his first behind the wheel driving lesson. Oh! My lord – get THIS Molly! My insurance rates didn’t double – they TRIPLED! Tripled. I mean, I knew they would because I vaguely remember that happening when 26 started driving, but….OUCH. Another reason why that little lazy ass needs to get his grades up. I couldn’t even check off the “Gets a B average or better at school” GAWD!

To relieve the stress from that, there is a renewal of the circuit training classes on Saturdays now (double yay!) with Coach T. After an hour of that we have a…(gulp) TWO HOUR RUN! Yes, I know, I don’t need to exactly follow the training routine of my triathlete friends, BUT, it’s a great way for ME to challenge my running endurance and also to get faster at my 5K distance. So….three hours of workouts.

I expect that on Sunday I will be sofa bound. Finally! One day when I will literally VACATE life 🙂

Swing by and bring me a beer on Sunday OK?

Love, Me.