There is a teenage girl who calls me dad who had the temerity to respond to moment at the dinner table with, “you could be sleeping on the couch tonight. Hope you think it is comfortable.”
I smiled and said I have slept in worst and less comfortable places and she told me that is the wrong answer.
“Little girl, you know I don’t report to you so I wouldn’t worry about whether my answer is considered right or wrong. Doesn’t matter if you think it is sarcastic or sweet. This not your business.”
She shook her head at me and I gave her a broad smile which she recognized as being the final step before receiving a glare that her grandfather shared with me on more than one occasion.
Her intent is good but this is not the time nor place to insert her opinion and she knows better.
Going to take a staycation in the very near future and I am almost giddy at the prospect because I am in dire need of it.
Hadn’t begun to realize how badly until after I got it approved and started to realize how long it has been since I have had a real vacation.
Facebook tells me that tomorrow marks the day I left for Texas for a new job and a new life. It was a scary moment for a million reasons and though it was the right one, the memory is a little painful.
There are conversations to be had about that one day.
Anyhoo, I technically had a one week vacation to take advantage of but I knew it wouldn’t easy to relax and not just because of the three day drive.
It didn’t help that I moved into that apartment in Grapevine with nothing more than an air mattress to sleep on for two weeks.
Barely two weeks post surgery, I was instructed not to carry anything heavy and had no local friends I could ask for help.
So I made 10,000 trips between the car and the third floor unloading gear and then lay on the floor wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.
I tried to look into the future and visualize what I wanted to create and wondered if I was crazy because some of what I wanted was the equivalent of trying to control the weather.
Four years later I am much closer to making some of what I visualized happen but still not there. Got some rough fields to till and fires to manage.
And that is part of why I need this vacation as much as I needed anything in a long while because I have to take a step back and turn down the intensity for a bit.
That is not something that is easy to do. The freight train doesn’t just stop running, but it can slow down for a bit.
Final Words
Sometimes you have to ask yourself what you would do if you stopped believing the voices that say it is impossible and listen to the ones that say ‘maybe.’
I am not talking about things we know are beyond question like true immortality or flying without a jetpack or some other device.
It is the other stuff where you know it is not a question “if you can” but “will you.”
That is the difference and in some ways it explains how I came to be where I am at and what I expect to come of it.
