Vacation, Staycation, Workcation

A vacation is supposed to be a restful break from work but even when one travels it seems that there are pressures brought to bear to make for stress, things like catching planes, scheduling glitches, and then squeezing so much into each day that fun sometimes becomes a chore.  Then there is the “staycation” where one stays home and hopes to lounge around and just enjoy home life.  Instead chores around the home crop up, family arrives to be entertained, and before you know it, it is time to go back to the grind.

And then there is the deliberate “work-cation” where one plans to work through the vacation.  My experience with this first serious workcation resulted in overwhelming relief at returning to regular work and giving the safety moment “know your limitations when doing home repairs”.

No, we did not have any accidents or even any near misses thanks to all my efforts as ground crew, cleaning up daily all the shingles, nails, papers and wires that were coming off the roof as we tore off the old shingles and proceeded with building up the new roof.  Despite careful planning, timing the work to coincide with the typically nicest two weeks of the summer we were forced to deal with 3 weeks of excessive heat, two days of high winds and several bouts of thunderstorms.  So much for planning against Mother Nature!

One night I woke from my sleep to hear my mother calling me.  This is something that has never happened before so I hurriedly put on my glasses and ran to her room only to find her standing in the middle of her room with a towel and bowl, desperately trying to catch water which my startled eyes saw streaming out of the light fixture in the ceiling.  Good heavens!  All through the house the rain was pouring in through the light fixtures.  I kept Mom there holding onto a bowl while I ran around getting plastic table clothes laid on furniture, then running for yoga mats, pots, bowls and anything else that would hold water.  I finally managed to get back to her room to lay out plastic, garbage buckets and towels to save her bedding. 

Since we were only replacing the front roof my own bedroom was dry and I gave her my room to sleep in while I staggered down to the basement to sleep.  I was awake most of the night though as it is such an uncomfortable bed and finally I dragged myself upstairs to discover Mom had decided to sleep in her own bed so myself sacrifice was for naught.  Woe is me.

That was the high drama of my two week workcation!