What is a vacation anyway?

I'm on vacation. But what is a vacation anyway? Being away from home? Being away from my cell phone? Being away from email? Being away from work? Not having to cook? Does it count if you stay home?

I'm failing miserably at this vacation thing. I carry my cell phone everywhere. I check my email a couple times a day. I've been cooking (but that's kinda fun).

I don't know how to relax. When I am home and doing my thing, working, doing the things I do every day, I sometimes wish I had more time...more time to do what? I don't know...do FUN things on the internet instead of just work-related things. Get lost in solitaire. Watch a movie. Go to the movies. Stay up late. Sleep late. Go out to dinner.

I'm in Florida visiting Santina. Shannan didn't come; she's working. I flew here, so I don't have a car. But she has a pool. Where do I need to go? I can just lounge at the pool.

It rained for two days straight. The first rainy day, I decided to go to the movies. I got up early and drove Santina to work. Later, about an hour before I had to pick her up, the wind and rain had really picked up. I worried this might be one of those hurricanes they get down here. Maybe I better leave early in case there's traffic or flooding or downed palm trees!

I find an umbrella and head for the Expedition. But i can't get in the giant SUV with the umbrella open like i can in my car. The door is too big. I try to close the umbrella while seated in the driver's seat but it's no use. I have to get out to close it and i get drenched. I throw the umbrella on the floor, slam the door, take a deep breath and notice the entire left side of my body is dripping. I would have been better off without the damn umbrella! I look up and, yep, the rain came to a dead stop. Figures.

That night Shannan informs me we are under a tornado watch. San & Harry are unfazed by this. They go to bed and I stay up to watch TV. My show is interrupted with one of those annoying buzzing emergency weather bulletins. It's been upgraded to a tornado WARNING! Ok, i admit, i always get the watches and warnings mixed up. I go on the internet to see if there is reason to panic. A watch means the conditions are right for a tornado. A warning means a tornado or tornadoes have been spotted. Oh, crap. Reading on, what to do in case of a tornado warning: get away from windows; get a radio and batteries and candles; go to a room in the center of the house; cover yourself with blankets, pillows, or a mattress. But i'm on vacation! Should i wake up Harry and Santina? She'll kill me. I can hear her now, "Jen, we get these all the time; they're nothing!" But what if there's a tornado and i don't wake them up? They'll say (if they survive), "Why didn't you wake us up, you idiot?"

I know; I'll stay up until 12:15 a.m., when the warning expires, and if i hear something that sounds like a freight train, i'll wake everyone up. Thank goodness, it expired and there was no tornado. Now my vacation can start.

Let's go back. The first day, I was especially ambitious. I'll walk to Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. Normally, I never shop at Wal-Mart, but the Target is not in walking distance, so Wal-Mart it is. It took me 40 minutes to walk there. Halfway there, I was already thinking about how I was going to get back. I certainly wasn't going to walk back. It was a lot futher than I thought.

I spent an hour in Wal-Mart. This store isn't so bad after all. I can buy a pair of shorts for like 10 bucks. I leave the store with a bag full of clothes and sundry items, only to hear, "YOU'RE AN IDIOT!" I turn around to see a woman in her car screaming at a 90-year-old lady struggling to get into a car driven by an old man, presumably her husband. The car is in the middle of the roadway, blocking the path of the screaming woman. Could this be? Could this woman be screaming at somebody's great-grandmother? How awful, I thought. Nobody seemed to find this behavior appalling. I have to say something.

"You need to calm down!"
"Well, she's an idiot!"
"You're being a bit abusive...geez!"

I told her!

So I start to head back, when I decide, no, I should stick with my original plan. I was going to continue down the road a bit and get my nails done. I may as well do that because there's no way in hell I'm walking back here tomorrow.

The young man who did my nails was very nice but explained to me how it is in South Florida with the old people. "They are getting in fights with people all the time." "They're grumpy." "All they do is complain."

Isn't vacation sort of like being retired but for a shorter amount of time? Doesn't it put us in a good mood? Doesn't that mean logically if you're retired, you should be in a really good mood? Not so, according to anyone under 50 in South Florida. Now I know why nobody came to the defense of granny. I still say it was just wrong!

I leave the Nail Depot with my South Florida/North Jersey-lookin' French-manicured fake fingernails. Now this is vacation. I can't have fake fingernails at home. Who wants to keep up with the maintenance? Besides, I can't write for shit on the steno machine with them.

I walk about 10 or 15 minutes and decide to take the bus back. I don't know how to ride the bus. My theory about vacation is everything should be better than home, so shouldn't I take a limo, not a bus? It wasn't bad. It only cost $1.50 (cost me $2.00 because the machine doesn't give change...regular bus riders probably know that). I barely had time to sit down and check out the other bus riders when we arrived at my stop. That was easy!

Fast forward to Day 4 (after the 2 straight days of rain). The weather forecast is warm and sunny. Great! I get up early, get dressed, walk out the front door for a morning walk...BRRR. Hey, what the? It's freezing outside! Okay, not -5 windchill freezing, but South Florida 60 degrees freezing. I spin right back around. I'll wait a couple hours. It warmed up to 70. My walk was nice and invigorating. I got my heart rate up and worked up a nice sweat. Good...because i'm going in the pool if it's the last thing i do. I changed into my suit and dipped my big toe in the almost overflowing pool from all the rain. Uh, maybe not. The temperature on the duck says 69 1/2 degrees. So i hung out listening to Howard Stern and reading a book, every once in a while dipping a little more of my body into the pool. Even though it was only 70 outside, the sun was really hot. Eventually, i couldn't stand resisting the inviting waters, and i plunged into the deep end. YOWZA! It was a shock to my system. That is fucking cold. But in a strange way, it felt good.

After sun-bathing for a few hours, i decided to take a shower. I pulled the knob to turn on the water in the tub, and it came right out in my hand. When you stay at someone else's house, you can only hope this is one of those things that happens from time to time and that you didn't just break their stuff. Maybe it's me, but i don't think fixing plumbing fixtures is something you're supposed to do while on vacation. I could do this at home! Ok, ok, but i need to take a shower. I'm covered in sunscreen. So i sit on the side of the tub and do my darnedest to get that sucker back in. it just won't go. What the? The entire shower rod falls on my head. The last time a shower rod fell in my presence was when Donna fell into it in Kendall Park after smoking pot at one of my infamous high school parties. It was hilarious then. Not so much today. Again, I'm on vacation. I shouldn't be fixing stuff! Ok, ok, it only took a few minutes to fix the shower curtain, but only after the entire curtain slid down the pole one ring at a time and landed in a big ball on the floor. I'm going to take a shower in Santina's bathroom.

We are going to Key West tomorrow. I did a little laundry. Santina and I will laugh for years to come, I'm sure, about the "laundry incident." Some stories are just not bloggable...to protect the innocent. But i will say this: I really shouldn't be doing laundry; I'm on vacation.

I expect this weekend in Key West will feel like a real vacation. There will be lots of people we can order around. We'll spend ridiculous amounts of money for ordinary things like lodging, food and drink. We'll stay up late, eat too much, get drunk, lounge in the pool, and sightsee. Oh, yeah, and there will be tipping, lots of tipping. Now that's what i call a real vacation.

JB