July is my month.
I always take a week of vacation around the first week in the month. Three things concur at this time: Independence Day, my birthday, and an activity slump at work. Even the name of the month is like cream rising to the top of the pail, like an endless blue sky and a quick thunderstorm rolling in; the first fireflies, the blooming of the day lilies; an endless white sand beach.
I wait out the month of June to take my first time off in July—my month. June has always been too early for me and vacations; it’s not my favorite time to take leave. I suppose that’s a holdover from my “two vacation weeks per year” days, many years ago when I worked all year to enjoy that paltry two weeks. Well, it didn’t seem paltry then. It was that deliciously anticipated time; you had to pick exactly the right time to go, or you’d be stuck indoors while it rained, or unable to get to all the places you wanted because of the schedules, or it wouldn’t be warm enough to swim. So June, as tempting as it is to jump right off the springboard edge of her into the Summer, wasn’t my month to vacation. There was another reason, too—once that two weeks was over, that was it. You got nothing more. No matter how long and hard you worked at your job, you only ever got those two little weeks--why blow it all at once at the beginning of summer, then have to wait out the rest of the season in your stuffy, indoor office watching everyone else take their vacations? No, I liked having the last word—the final say-so on time spent off work. I liked being the one that went after everyone else had scheduled and gone and returned with their sunburns and pictures. So, I usually took one week at the beginning of the month for me, (usually getting a couple of extra days because of the Independence Day holiday, ) and one week at the end of the month, to lord over everyone else. It bracketed my July in glorious, lazy vacation days and made my month feel extraordinarily decadent.
There is something really wicked about only working half a month; allowing your co-workers to pick up the ball for you not once, but twice; coming in to work with your sunburn just beginning, and blurry pictures of fireworks, or fat from birthday cake and picnic food; then quietly sitting there doing your job for two weeks, knowing full well that the last week of the month you’d be off again, while they sat there bored and hot and envious. It’s a powerful summer-phrodisiac.
But as I discovered, this system has its drawbacks. Sure, it’s nice to have the extra vacation time around the holiday—but that’s also usually when we get one whopper of a storm. I truly cannot remember a Fourth of July when it did not rain or storm like the gates of hell had come loose and let all the weather demons out. And if by some miracle we don’t get it then, we do get it at the end of the month. So one or more of my vacation weeks was always spent wondering if my tree would be standing at the end of the week, or watching TV for tornado news.
I still don’t mind. July is my birth month, and therefore, I have always had a bit of a romantic attachment to it—and almost nothing can dampen that. Not even an Ohio tornado.
But over the years, things changed. Now, the longer I work, the more vacation time I build up—and now I actually end up with six weeks of vacation per year! Talk about decadence! I can take a trip around the world! Go to Asia and back! Plan a leisurely train ride through the Rockies or a slow cruise through the Northwest Passage! Go to Europe! Plan a real home-improvement project and actually have the time to finish it and still go somewhere! It’s unbelievable. I still get goose bumps when I hear my personnel secretary call and tell me I have to “use or lose” a week of leave that I didn’t even realize I’d accrued. Of course I use it.
But I still don’t go in June. I wait out June’s quixotic temperament, and her undecided attitude, and I still take off my two bracketing weeks in July. Then, I have another two weeks to take—so I go somewhere in August. August—the fat, laughing belly of the summer, sunburned and sand-covered and stuffed full of potato salad, hot dogs and Kool-Aid ®. It’s the best time to go anywhere—the last hurrah of the season before school begins again, before work picks up again, before the endless blue sky and the white soft sands and the scudding clouds retreat into memory, and the nodding heavy-petalled heads of dahlias stop blooming. It’s hot enough, stable enough weather-wise, and everything in this hemisphere is still summer.
Then, once the summer has spent itself, I have two more weeks to spend. On whatever I wish. Whenever I wish. Sometimes that means I’ll spend it at the Yuletide holidays. Sometimes I spend it piecemeal, adding an extra day to a Monday holiday or a weekend. By the time Spring rolls around, and everyone begins gearing up for summer again, I’ve usually got only a day or two left—which I sometimes add to that first week in July.
This year our office moved in the first week of July—so going back to work after my first vacation week was like still being on vacation. We didn’t have telephone service, or computer DSL lines, and even the coffeepot couldn’t be used, because I couldn’t find the coffee! I came in, spent an hour or two organizing what I could, then went back home again, because nothing else could be done anyway. Gradually, over the next two weeks, we got things on track again—and now, except for a largish pile of unwanted furniture in the middle of the room (which will need to be taken down via elevator to the dumpsters,) there’s now an office where once was only drywalled space. Phones are back up. Files put away. Even the coffee has been found. A routine has been established, and I’ve discovered the joys of walking up two flights of stairs every day. And, of course, as soon as it is all organized and put together, I’m off again for my last-week-in-July week. Then, when I go back after this one, we have a conference for a week—at a posh hotel in Cleveland—then, I have jury duty for a week!! By this time it will be the second week in August, and I only have to wait out the month until it’s over and the four-day Labor Day holiday ends—and I will go on my “big” trip of the year--to France for 11 days!
It’s been a busy, strange, and oddly arranged year. I figure I’ve only actually worked for one month since the end of Spring, and that was June. I’ll only work for two weeks in August. And I haven’t even touched my last two weeks of the year yet!
Can a person OD on decadence?
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