Failure of the Day: In With The New and Such and Whatnot

I’m officially on vacation; I don’t go back until January 3rd. I don’t actually need a vacation, but I took the time off as a matter of principle. According to the employee handbook, (which, after a few years of being an independent contractor and having no employment benefits of my own, made for a delightful and riveting read), employees who begin work in July accrue 4 days of paid vacation during the calendar year they begin their employment. Now, because I’ve worked there for just shy of six months, I didn’t get a raise this month, as most of my co-workers did, so it seemed the least I could do was use my vacation time. And being the savvy girl I am, I spotted 4 days that could, in conjuction with the company-wide official holidays and two weekends, be parlayed into ten straight days off.

I don’t have anything to do with my time off. I intend to clean the living hell out of my closet and donate a buttload of clothes to the Goodwill and then sell a large number of books that I really and truly don’t need any more (the secret society encyclopedias and my large collection of very stupid Timothy Leary’s books, for example).

Chris has 3-day weekends the rest of the month but other than that he’s working next week, so during the days I intend to indulge my new latte habit write my arse off. The three Joanna Newsom songs I’ve heard fill my head with lines of poetry so tiny and intricate that could have been crocheted by grasshoppers. I haven’t picked up her whole CD yet because Chris misconstrued our rule about not buying himself presents after Thanksgiving as also applying to me, and so I have had to wait. I’ve made do with the excellent Funeral by the Arcade Fire, which I warmed to slowly and now listen to little else.

And there you have it, my 2004 survival guide, figured out with 8 days to spare: get some rest, give some stuff away, find and listen to music that makes you write, and put 3 packets of Splenda in each and every latte. Happy what have you.