Vacation

I am theoretically on vacation this week, though it hardly seems so. When you buy a house, the house owns you, not you the house. There comes a stage where a house begins to haunt you, demanding some of your attention in each waking moment. This week has been one son sick (though back to school today); catching up with another, just out of the Marines and with plans that sounded worrisome, but just might work out - I have gone from thinking them 10% possible to better than 50% possible (heck, the first parts look way better than that); covering errors in a cathedral ceiling whose grooved planks are separating; organising the work bench and tools for the first time in decades - lots of unidentifiable bits of plastic or metal that are clearly meant to do something very efficiently, but Lord knows what; weeding through the camping equipment, much of it incomplete and all of it twenty years old or more; taking an inventory of emergency preparedness and finding that throwing dry or canned foods into a bag and putting away some containers of water isn't really the thing.

My vague idea of a day trip alone, going here or there, is long since abandoned. Younger men may fantasize any number of superpowers it would be fun to have. Invisibility has always sounded like the best one to me, and this week even more.

Not much reading or computer. I have little idea what is happening in the world and find I don't much mind. Even my usual fond hope of drinking a little too much hasn't panned out, as I learned last fall it's not as much fun as I remembered - and I still have to be a good example anyway.