Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

Vacation

Writing: Why Vacations Are No Longer “Catch-Up Time”

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We just recently got back from vacation. Once upon a time, a vacation from work was a relaxing time, a time I could catch up on my writing, maybe even get a little bit ahead. We’d have things planned, of course, and spontaneous things would come up, but there always seemed to be plenty of time to get in a few thousand more words.

Then we had kids.

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And I have to people. *shudders*

 

I had thought the four day weekend we had for the Fourth of July or the week of vacation we took would give me some time to work on my writing and maybe do a few other things like update my mailing list. We had quite a bit of time after all. Sure, we had things planned, like a small cook-out with close family and a larger graduation party for my niece. I already had the food planned, and I had selected tasty things with minimal prep. The gift was already purchased. And yes, we were taking the kids to a water park. Wait, what do you mean my expectations weren’t realistic?

But I hadn’t figured that one or the other of my children would want to snuggle the entire vacation. And by snuggle, I mean never leave my side. Even in ninety degree weather.

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Can we be any closer, momma?

While this is a gift, and I like snuggling them, by day two, I am getting a bit annoyed. Snuggling literally means they sit on me. Both of them. At the same time. While still cute, they are a lot bigger and heavier than they were. And they squirm. And wriggle. And try to steal more real estate on my lap from each other until they both get tossed off.

And there comes a point where I simply want my space back.

And writing does not happen when there is snuggling. Most of the time, writing doesn’t happen when they are awake and in the house. My oldest one is an avid reader, and despite her age, she can and will read over my shoulder as I am typing. Yeah, not cool, especially if I am “in the zone” and don’t see her right away as I don’t write “closed door” romance.

Reading doesn’t usually happen, either. I don’t read “closed door” romance, either.

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While I wouldn’t trade these days for the world, I do need to adjust my expectations.

Vacation doesn’t mean what it used to, and if I still want time to write every day, I am going to have to get up at 5am like it’s a work day.

Not that I want to get up at 5am. If left to my own devices, I wouldn’t go to bed until well after midnight then sleep in every morning. But that hasn’t been my life since college. The one and only time my natural sleep cycle meshed with my obligations.

I wish I were a morning person.

5 Things I Learned about Myself on Vacation

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I wouldn’t say learned, exactly, but perhaps was strongly reminded of in a less than subtle way.

5 Things I Learned about Myself on Vacation

 

  1. I Like Need Things Planned

This whole going with the flow thing is for people that are not me. I need to know what we’re doing and when. I want plans solidified. Train schedules plotted out. Museum hours accounted for. Not, this doesn’t apply to my writing, but it does everything else (which is why it still stymies me as to why I can’t be a plotter).

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  1. I Like (Need) Things to Be on Time

In my family, if you’re not five minutes (okay, fifteen) early, you’re late. Why yes, my ancestors are German, why do you ask? I try very hard to be on time and ready to go, which I accomplished all the time every time before we had children. Now, I feel like I have to tell everyone we need to leave thirty minutes sooner than we actually do just to have a chance at leaving on time.

And when we’re late anyway? Plans start to fall apart.

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What did people do before watches and cell phones?

 

  1. Crowds Make Me Edgy

I don’t like crowds. I’ve never liked crowds. Most of my life, I’ve been content to shop first thing in the morning to avoid crowds. Then, internet shopping became a thing, and I could shop whenever I liked without having to talk to a soul.

But every single thing that involves a family vacation also seems to avoid crows. Lots of them.

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  1. I Am Not Pleasant When Stressed

Who is, really? And no, breathing techniques don’t work.

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  1. Stress Causes Migraines

And these make me even more pleasant! What was the point of this vacation again?

 

4 Reasons Why Americans Don’t Take Vacation

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Yes, it’s true that Americans don’t take all of their vacation days.

It’s also true that Americans tend to get far fewer vacation days than our counterparts in the rest of the industrialized world.

 So, why aren’t we taking those days?

Here’s my four reasons for not wanting to take another week off of work anytime soon.

4  Reasons Why Americans Don’t Take Vacation

  1. You have to Plan Them

At least my vacations don’t plan themselves. Sad, really, but my reality. When you add in two children and no real history of taking family vacations when I was a child to draw from, trying to figure out where to go and what to do that will interest both children without making me want to claw out my own eyes is a feat.

Then there are all the logistics that go with them. If something goes wrong spending six hours in O’Hare with two cranky children might be its own circle of hell.

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2. Work Waits for No One

There’s not just the work of packing and planning, which is a pain in itself. I’m talking about getting everything ready at work. I’m a desk jockey for a living. That means no one is covering for me while I’m out. Or at least, not covering more than the very basics. So everything else must be done before I leave. This adds to the stress of going. I seriously do not know how my counterparts in our foreign offices are able to take off two or three consecutive weeks every year. Last time I got off two consecutive weeks was when I was in college.

3. You Have to Recover From Them

Laundry. Unpacking. Putting everything away. This is all some of the last things anyone wants to do when they come home from a family vacation. My family tends to be tired and grumpy. And some of us need our space and alone time that we haven’t gotten since the “vacation” started.

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 4. Are They Really Fun?

The jury is still out on this. I enjoyed vacations much more when my husband and I were younger. We didn’t need to plan so much, and we were able to go with the flow more. Not go with the flow, exactly, but go with it more. Kids don’t go with the flow. Ever. The amount of crying, yelling, fussing and general malaise makes me wonder why we did this. Why we spent the money and time on this.

Then I look back at the pictures of the kids smiling and laughing. No, Maybe I didn’t have fun, but they sure did. And they keep talking about the things we saw and did. So maybe that’s why. And maybe I’ll remember it being better later.

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How about you? Did you take family vacations as a kid? Did you or do you take them with your own kids? Any tips or advice for someone new to this?

Going Home

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Well, not home. Not really.

It was my grandmother’s 90th birthday, and we drove almost seven hours to rural Ohio to celebrate with her.
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It’s strange coming back to see her. And, if I’m totally honest, depressing.
Almost all of my mom’s family lives in this area, and when I was a kid, I desperately wished we lived there, too. All my aunts and uncles lived there. My cousins. My grandparents. They saw each other all the time, whereas I got to seem them a couple of times a year. I was sad and jealous.
I didn’t understand that my mother had joined the military to escape. She had a lot of very good reasons to leave, reasons that eventually included daughters of her own.
When I go back now, nothing seems like the world I wanted to join. Yes, my kids are drinking out of the same cups I used when I was a kid. My grandmother has the same rose-printed plates. Even the same wood paneling is in her house. But that’s where it ends.
When I was a kid, manufacturing was strong where she lives. Everyone had jobs, nice houses, and newer cars. We used to walk downtown for ice cream or to visit the Five and Ten.
Now, most of the store fronts are empty. Many of the beautiful old homes have been sub-divided into apartments. Others are in a sad state of repair. Piles of junk sit in yards further outside of the small town, especially old cars and boats. Paint is peeling. Front steps rotting. Out buildings collapsed.
Then there are the trailer parks. Unless you’ve seen rural poverty, you don’t know what I’m talking about. Think about a 1950s RV set-up on blocks. Old. Rusted. Windows boarded in places. Cinder blocks for steps. Now imagine twenty of them clustered together. A few miles away, another trailer “park”. Now imagine watching a little six-year-old boy with light blonde hair and a navy jacket struggling to open the rickety door as he balances on a part of the steps still intact.
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Why are things so bad now?
It’s a story told all over the Midwest. Factories that once employed entire towns are gone, and there are no new manufacturing jobs to replace them. Whenever we visit, another of my cousins have been laid off and is trying to find a job. The next job they get always pay less than the one they had before.
The jobs still remaining that pay more than minimum wage all seem to be in the medical field or other services needed by the elderly and retired. Especially in-home nursing. Few out there can afford assisted living even if they are no longer completely self-sufficient.
But those jobs tend to require degrees, and the ones that don’t require degrees pay even less than the few remaining factory jobs.
Doctors in the area live in mansions situated on sprawling lands. Even nurses do well. But I learned from my cousin that being a pharmacy tech pays less than working for Whirlpool. I can understand the growing fear and resentment as they scrape together to get by while a newcomer to the area is building a heated outbuilding larger than their homes to store his three boats.
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Even the skilled aren’t immune.
My uncle recently closed his business after it had been around for over fifty years. He used to sell and repair appliances like washers and dryers. He started as an apprentice when he was a teenager, and when the owner retired, he sold the business to my uncle.
My uncle did great at first. But then Lowes and Home Depot moved into the area, and he simply couldn’t compete with them on price. Eventually, he closed the Main Street shop and focused on repair.
But with how cheap appliances were becoming, more people just replaced broken ones rather than repairing them. So, he had to start letting the technicians that worked for him go. Then his secretary.
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Finally, he closed his business and took a job as an electrical inspector for the county. It sucks. After more than thirty years of working for himself, he couldn’t make a living at it anymore. Thank goodness he’s a master electrician and was able to get other work.
Yeah, they’re my family and I’m biased, but these aren’t dumb people. Or lazy people. Most of them work damn hard. They simply have no way forward. They’re trying to eek out a living without giving up family, friends, and community. They’re trying to find a way forward after manufacturing was gutted from the Rust Belt.
And there is no safety net for them. No retraining for them. No real hope for things to ever improve.
College is a dream. Something rich kids do. Something they wish they could give their kids. But when most families of four earn less than $40k a year, even state school is out of reach.
Some young men and women join the military. It’s a way out, a job, and it promises to teach them real skills. Two of my cousins tried to join, but one failed the physical and the other hurt his knee to the point it required surgery two weeks before boot camp.
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Still, I’m amazed how many of them have friends that joined the military, and how many of them know someone that gave their life. You see pro-veteran signs, slogans, and even graffiti everywhere. Makes me wonder if this is why.
It’s people like this that voted for our current president. They’re the ones that propelled him to victory. People who felt lost and left behind. People who want the family and community my grandfather had. Or, what they think he had. They want the jobs back. They want hope.
If you haven’t driven through rural Ohio, it’s hard to understand. If you have, you may still not agree with their choices, but you can understand them. I hope our president doesn’t disappoint them.
How about you? Does your family live near you? Or are they far away? Did you grow up with a large family and love it, or maybe you had a small family and loved that? Ever been through rural Ohio?

It'll Be Fun, They Said

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Ah, the family vacation. We didn’t take these much as kids as our family simply couldn’t afford it. Family vacations in my childhood primarily consisted of me being sent off with grandparents so our parents could get some time away.

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DH and I didn’t take too many vacations when our first child was small, partially because of the restrictions I was on as we tried to have a second.

Now that both children are older, we thought it would be fun to try a quick three-day vacation. We all were excited, and I had high-hopes.

I’d done my research, having both searched the internet and talked to lots of other people as to where a good place would be to go with a toddler and pre-schooler in the winter. I wanted to be close enough to home we could come back if we needed to, but far enough away that we’d test out the over-night thing.

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After selecting where we were going, then came all of the planning. Making sure we had snacks in the car and in the room. Enough  drinks. Enough clothes to get us through. Toiletries. Entertainment for in the car.  I felt like I was planning a military assault. Perhaps that should have been a clue.

And yes, the vacation was as horrible as some of you are imagining

They had all kinds of up-charges for different things to add to your room, but none of them including giving you a “toddler proof” room. You forget what it means for your toddler to have access to every cord, every cable, and every outlet in a typical hotel room. There are no toddler gates barring off stairs, no toddler locks on doors.

There is no safe place in the room where she can play for ten minutes while you catch your breath. And if you try to make a play area anyway, there were will be tissues scattered across the carpet and you’ll find yourself sprinting across to room to stop her just as she attempts to figure out how to unplug the lamp.

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Vacation also meant being subjected to kids out of their comfort zone. Out of their comfort zone and over-tired, cranky and irritable. Everyone’s favorite kind of child!

The biggest issue to my having fun of any sort was my expectations. I went into the long weekend wanting a vacation. Time to relax, unwind, and recharge. This was anything but that.

They were kids at a water park. They needed constant supervision. I knew that going into it, but what I didn’t understand was how much work this was with none of the fun.

See, my oldest child is big enough to do a lot of stuff at a water park. I figured DH and I would switch-off going on the slides and rides with the oldest, and then spending time in the toddler zone with the little one.

What I didn’t anticipate was that my oldest child would want to do nothing but play in the baby area with her sister. No water slides, no fun rides. We literally spent hours in water up to our ankles. Our knees when the oldest finally got a little braver.

Yeah, fabulous way to spend our time at the water park.

Our issues were compounded by DD1 being an early riser. She’s up at 6am and ready to go. The park doesn’t open until 9am. This means her having to wait and me having to listen to her ask “if it’s time to go yet” for three hours. By the time we got the water park, I was ready to leave.

Let’s also remember that I’m an introvert.  Being stuck in a huge crowd of people I don’t know, wearing only a swimsuit, is already not my idea of fun. I thought this was going to be tempered with the excitement of water slides. I was wrong.

But it did teach me some valuable lessons. One of them is that we’re just not ready for a family vacation yet. None of us.

I work full time and so does DH. If we’re going to do a vacation, it has to be a vacation for the whole family. Something we’re all going to enjoy.

I know DD1 had a blast. She will be talking about it for weeks.

I’m just glad to be home, book in hand, and iPad waiting.

 

How about you? Did you go on family vacations as a child? Did you like them? Do you go on family vacations now? How are they?  Where did/do you go on vacation? A favorite place come to mind? Something you really loved?