Staycation 2011, Days 0–2

Work has a strange policy: they let you carry over two weeks of vacation per year. But everyone gets three weeks, plus a week of personal days and floating holidays, so (if you carried over two weeks from last year) you pretty much have to burn off a month’s worth of vacation to keep from losing any. The upshot is, the office gets awfully empty the second half of December.

We were hoping to get down to Florida to visit Mom before Christmas, but I couldn’t ever get anyone to nail down the days they were off… so maybe we’ll go next month. At least with the chicken houses in permanent shutdown, there won’t be that to contend with — but I have full faith in Mrs. Fetched’s ability to find some other timesuck to throw me into.

With Mason around, I’m already watching him nearly all weekend, every weekend. This weekend was typical in that regard. After a haircut trip yesterday, I zipped over to the bank to deposit a check and that was the closest thing approaching free time I had. Mason refused to take an afternoon nap, so I had none of the time I expected for writing this post yesterday. Then Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest took off on a shopping trip, leaving us to find our own supper. I know Mason likes Subway’s meatballs, so we went there… and they were out of meatballs. I headed up to Johnny’s, where the food’s good but the service is glacial, and got us some chow. Then it was off to Chick-Fil-A, the only fast-food joint around here with an indoor playground, to let Mason burn off some energy.

One thing about Mason: he has a near-fetish for straight lines. He’ll line his cars up in a neat little row, then have a Toddler Meltdown™ when they don’t stay straight when he pushes the line. On modern playgrounds, with their tunnels and spiral slides, he’ll go through a straight tunnel — but if he can’t see the other end, he won’t go in. So he would go up the stairs, then come down and go poke around in the toddler area. Meanwhile, a little girl about three months younger than him was roaring down the spiral slide and having a good old time. Didn’t make the slightest impression on him.

So I’m not sure what happened — maybe some other kids chivvied him through the bent tunnel into the upper level — but he ended up in the enclosed area up top and started crying, because he wouldn’t go down the slide and he wouldn’t go back down the tunnel where he couldn’t see the outlet. I had to climb in there and talk him down; if he could see me, he was fine.

He also refused to nap today — and I had to make rolls for the supper after our church cantata — but I chucked him in his crib anyway until I got the dough thrown together. He was not exactly happy about that, but he got over it pretty quick once I came in and got him out. I got the rolls done just in time — I mean, we were out the door as soon as I threw them in a paper bag — and my throat survived the singing.

Tomorrow, I hope to do some yard work and some writing. Not necessarily in that order. The Boy and Snippet will be here for Christmas proper — or maybe I should say improper — so there might be a little soap opera-kind of post this weekend.