For me, a vacation isn’t what most people would call a vacation. I spend most of my time taking care of things that I don’t normally have time for. Things like home repair, organizing, cooking, gardening, and visiting with family. Last year I spent my vacation remodeling a spare bedroom into my home office. While I feel accomplished, I rarely feel relaxed at the end. This year was no different.
I selected to take two weeks off in July. This is kind of a no brainer for us as both my husband and I have birthdays that fall within a week of each other during this time. This year it also aligned with the birth of our new granddaughter. I took my two weeks expecting to help my daughter out with the new baby and my other two grandchildren. She was due to arrive the day before my vacation started. As with most babies in our family, she decided to take her own sweet time. I decided to fill my time waiting with some other items…
Christmas in July
In addition to vacation, July is a time when we start preparing for Christmas. I know that this is odd, but we are homemade gift givers. During the holidays I put together baskets for family and friends full of food items that are made in our kitchen. During June we begin the lengthy process by creating jam while the berries are still fresh in the fields of our local farms. We start with assessing the current stock of empty jars and lids.
Then we decide what types of jam/jelly we will be making for the year and counting how many more jars and lids we will need. This year, we made strawberry, tayberry, tay-black cap and black cap.
In August we will add various pepper jelly flavors as well. For now, we have 97-half pints, and 6-pint jars of jam. Fingers crossed, that this is enough. My grandkids can make short work of a pint in no time at all.
First time recipients of my jam always ask, “what is a tayberry?” or “what is a black cap?”. Tayberries are a cross between a Scotland raspberry and an Oregon blackberry. Black caps are black raspberries. Black caps are deliciously sweet and make wonderful jam! They also have a tremendous number of antioxidants. Tayberries are a bit tangier but are fantastic if you like more ZING! with your morning toast.
So, by middle of week one, still no new grandbaby. I turned my attention to other projects because ADHD is a cruel disease that makes it impossible to not be filling my time with something. A brain at rest only seems to get me into trouble. Perhaps I should revisit meditation.
Cleaning up the garden
A few weeks before my vacation, the northwest experienced an unusual heatwave. It got above 100 degrees here. This is not something that the people or the plants are accustomed to here. Despite my constant watering my more fragile plants did not care for the heat. My beautiful tomato plants began turning yellow, some of the flowers were curling up and starting to die, my lettuce was wilting, and my roses were dropping petals like there was no tomorrow.
By the time of my vacation, the garden resembled a decimated war zone. The only plants that seemed to do well were the petunias. It should be noted that should we have an apocalyptic event, I believe the petunias will be the only flower that survives.
It was time to get my hands dirty.
I consulted my local gardener’s forum to see how I could help my ailing tomatoes. They recommended staking them and pruning them back to force new growth. I also missed a step and planted them too close together, but it was too late to separate them now as they already had fruit.
My oldest daughter, the one waiting for the arrival of my new granddaughter, suggested that I move the wilting flowers to the back “yard” to give them shade to recover.
For the remainder, I got out my pruning shears and went to town cutting back the damage and forcing new growth. The lettuce and I are still at odds as it refuses to grow out, only up. I think I must have the tallest lettuces on the planet.
Party at Maka’s house
By Friday of the first week, I was feeling accomplished. My daughter called and said that Saturday was going to be the day whether my granddaughter liked it or not. Since they had an early arrival time at the hospital, I offered to watch my other two grandchildren, Tesla and Emrys. This would allow my daughter and her husband to have a last night of quiet before the baby arrived and everyone could get a better night’s sleep, sort of.
We rolled out the big Cordaroy bed in our room so that they could have a sleep over with Maka and Papa. We ate hamburgers, had birthday cake (it was my birthday and they insisted I needed a party), and played video games. Here’s the funny bit. They were so excited about this bed on the floor and were looking forward to camping out there. Truth be told I was looking for a good night’s sleep. However, by the time everyone was ready for bed I was getting a different story. Emrys wanted to read with Maka and snuggle till he fell asleep. Tesla was hot on the floor and so she wanted to sleep on the bed so that she could get the cool air from the air conditioner. So, the three of us slept on my king size bed. My husband had decided earlier on that he would be better off sleeping elsewhere in the house because he is smart this way. I woke up on Saturday with Tesla lying horizontally across the bed and Emrys sliding into the space between the two sides of our sleep number bed. He loved it!
We got up and made pancakes with left over jam. I kept sending photos to my daughter Amy in the hospital to keep her up to date on the kids. Tesla kept stealing my phone so that she could send voice recorded messages to her mother. Not sure how Amy felt about getting several iterations of voice messages because she would send her all her tries at recording.
We walked to the park to play on the swings. I threw my back out, forgetting that I am no longer a spring chicken and cannot lift children over the age of five up to reach the swinging bars without hurting myself. My husband gave us a ride back from the park (Have I mentioned what lucky woman I am?).
We filled a lot of time waiting for the baby. We “played” Exploding Kittens. We didn’t exactly follow the rules, but it was fun anyway. We watered the plants in the garden, played video games, read stories, and ate more cake. We were just getting ready to go to sleep when baby Freya arrived. The kids were SO excited! They were full of questions and wanting to talk to their Mom and Dad. After everyone had gotten a chance to talk and see pictures of the baby, we all settled in for the night. Maka slept on the floor on the lumpy Cordaroy mattress.
In the morning we had left over pancakes and started packing up their things for when their Dad would get them for a special day out.
I love having my grandkids over, they are the light of my life. I just need a day or so to recover after they leave.
Bits and Bobs
The remainder of my vacation was full of small things. Things that eat up time and for some reason never seem that satisfying.
Things like finally getting rid of the four huge recliners, one of which smelled like cat pee, despite what seems like hundreds of cleaning sessions. Then replacing them with two new recliners. While the damage to the previous chair was done by Cleo, Mila has been given “the talk” about scratching on the new furniture. We will see how that holds up. In the meantime, my house now smells fantastic!
I also spent an hour looking for my pepper jelly recipe. The one that my sister gave me. She reminded me of this when I wouldn’t give her my recipe for black cap jam. Truth be told it isn’t the recipe that makes my jam special. It is the way it is processed and that is a secret only my kids will learn. Besides, the pepper jelly recipe isn’t really hers anymore. I have reworked it a bit and I’ve made my yearly changes, experiments, if you will. I have some great ideas this year, but I still haven’t found the stinking recipe! Karma, I guess.
Finally, I puttered a bit with our technology in the house. While I was rearranging furniture for the chairs, I noted that I hadn’t gotten the sound bar working for our TV. So, I fixed that. I also organized all the cables. When that was done, I binge watched TV shows until three in the morning. I also hooked up our new portable air conditioner. I think I may have forgotten my ADHD medication that day…
The takeaway
What was my big takeaway from my vacation which ends tonight? Vacation may not always be a trip to Hawaii, Paris or even a hiking trip to the beach. Sometimes, vacation is just getting to reconnect with your life and remember what it is like to be connected with the people you love. I am hoping that this is what retirement looks like when I get there.
This was my favorite part…. Welcome to the world and our family little Freya!
Maka Knows 