PlazaJen: Passion Knit

Today is the first day of my vacation! I'm actually taking all of next week off, with many plans & dates already set. The new job gives you your birthday off, so with the 4th of July Holiday, my birthday, and a free 1/2 summer day on Friday, I get one full week for the low, low price of 2.5 vacation days!

And I'm obsessing. It feels like it's too soon to take more than one day of vacation. It's been only three months, and I told my boss yesterday that I feel competitive & I shouldn't take vacation time because he's not taking vacation time. Now, granted, he's buying the company, and has a differently-vested interest in the place, but still - it's not that I think I'm so fabulous and everything will fall apart without my big mouth & brain there - but it's mostly the whole not-knowing what's happening all the time, combined with that tiny grain of fear that if you're not there, maybe they'll start to think they don't need you anymore. It's a tiny grain, but at the last job, it was the size of a fuckin' boulder. That sort of mentality was bred & fostered, and god help you if something went wrong while you were out - never mind the fact we're in a business where stuff goes wrong ALL THE TIME, deadlines don't get met, we're the middle-men, juggling & shuffling - it's part of the ad biz. Sure, there are people who do it badly, and leave big messes to clean up. They have poor business hygiene, approving things randomly and not leaving a trail to follow, so three months later you look like a cartoon character with question marks over your head. I knew that when I was asked to depart the last place, that inherent in their "you must leave now" policy, came the inability to follow through on loose ends, straggling threads, and whoever got stuck doing it was gonna curse your ass for having to be stuck on clean-up. Sorta like being the bus driver who has to clean up the vomit.

I know vacation is there to be taken. I always take it. If I were going to Jamaica, I would still worry, but I wouldn't cancel the trip. Since I'm staying in town, I'm going to check my voicemail & email regularly, and hope that all the effort I've put in this week to handle everything that's outstanding is enough to keep anyone from cursing my existence (and absence!) :) And I will have fun. I'm going to work on organizing my craft room, take some initial runs at the garage cleaning-out-experience, since that's the gateway to buying a big-ass tv, per our agreement, getting my hair cut, going to dinner with some "rediscovered" friends, SLEEPING, and all sorts of other lofty goals that if I type out will allow others to remind me that I didn't do.... ;)

So, on the birthday front, I decided this morning that being medium-aged sounded better than middle-aged. I turn 37 next Wednesday, and I plan to spend it with friends, our dogs & my best friend in the world, JWo. The following day I'll have knitty friends over & we'll eat like it's the last supper (after the last time, JWo commented, "Those girls can EAT!") and laugh and reconnect. Oh yeah, and knit. It's weird, because most of my life, I spent it as the "younger one" - I have a July birthday, I skipped first grade, and so I was 16 when I graduated from high school, 20 when I graduated from college. People in the business world were always older, and now I'm older than one of my bosses. I refuse to buy in to society's notion that youth is king, because youth is primarily stupid. I worry about dying, about losing people I love, maybe a little bit more than I did when I was 20, but I've always worried about that stuff. My hands look older now when I stop to look at them, and I see little lines around my eyes.

But, much like Great-Grandma Hattie, I may never know if I have gray hair. When she died at the age of 97, she was a deep auburn redhead. Bless her heart, I've been meaning to do a memory post in her honor, and I will, this week. Oh yeah, I'm also coloring & highlighting my hair. :)