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No Break
Christmas Break
January 6, 2006
I came
back to work on Tuesday after a 10-day Christmas Vacation. That’s
right, I had 10 paid days off of work. Working in higher ed can be
pretty sweet sometimes. (I also get free haircuts at the beauty
school, but that can be risky business.)
I
started working full time at SLCC a year ago. Even though I got hired
for the position in December, I think they purposely set my start date
as January 1 so they wouldn’t have to pay me for Christmas break. I
was bummed out, but I started postulating my plans for the next year.
I figured with a whole week off and no distractions, I could
accomplish just about anything. (I have always held the belief that if
I had two weeks alone in a room I could write an entire album or maybe
a children’s book. I probably overestimate my creativity.)
There
was one thing I wasn’t thinking about when I was making my plans back
then – parenthood. All plans erased.
The 10
days at home gave me an idea what Traci’s life is like. Difficult.
It is amazing to me how a child that only weighs eight pounds can take
up so much space – she has her own room, her stuff takes up half the
living room and the entire backseat of the car – and require so much
energy.
I
didn’t write an album, I didn’t write a children’s book. I barely left
my living room. I think there were at least five days that I didn’t
even change out of my pajamas. That’s not to say that the week was
uneventful. I was able to get Paige up to speed on The OC. We
watched 27 episodes in four days, knocking out the entire first
season. Just like her mother, she finds Marissa Cooper to be
unbearably stupid at times.
Paige
also had her theatrical debut starring as none other than Baby Jesus
in “The Nativity,” directed by my dad. It was a star-studded affair,
featuring my two 3-year-old nephews as wise men and my 1-year-old
nephew as a donkey (he already had an Eeyore costume). Traci played
Mary of course. I thought I was a shoo-in for the part of Joseph, but
my dad, El Capitan, said that we didn’t need a Joseph. He wasn’t
that important.
So now
I’m back at work, realizing it is a lot easier to be here than at
home. Let the real vacation begin…
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