Sobby-Story Life

This post was going to be about how lovely my weekend was , filled with planting flowers in the yard, leisurely breakfasts on the patio, playing tag with Big A, and hanging out with our nieces. (I did up a nice Father's day meal and gifty thing for DH, if I do say so myself.) And last night while I was doing chores after the kids fell asleep I felt really content. It was part afterglow from the weekend, part anticipation of the next few months. In my mind I saw many afternoons where the kids would be splashing in the kiddie pool and we would all be relaxing together. And most of all, I saw vacations. Summery, sparkly holidays!

DH really wanted to visit our parents (who all live in the same town) this summer because Big A is finally old enough for us to fly without tranq doses all around and Little A is young enough that she won't get incredibly antsy on airplanes yet. But while the timing is right, the price of four tickets to East Bumblefuck NY most certainly is not. In the last few years high fuel costs and airline industry consolidation have doubled the cost of going there. The price for tickets and car rental needed to visit the family is now comparable to an entire month's home-owner's insurance, local tax, and mortgage payments for us in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yikes.

Even if we had that kind of extra money, I'm from a place that Garfield author Jim Davis reportedly claimed was the source of his strip's "inspiration." When the author of a comic as lame as Garfield recognizes your home town is even lower on the totem pole of shame than he is, safe to say that it's not worth taking out a loan out to visit.

So rather than taking a full week off and flying somewhere, we finally decided that we'd go on a couple long-weekend camping trips this summer instead. Even though we had to buy a bigger tent to accommodate the growing family and also get a car-top carrier to haul all our stuff, it was still multiple-times cheaper to do that than fly someplace. And I actually like camping a lot. I love cooking on the cute little stove and snuggling down into my sleeping bag in the cozy little tent with my family surrounding me at night. Also, flashlights! I have a new LED one I can't wait to play with ...

But then DH calls me from work today saying a project deadline might be moved back so that it falls in our July camping trip. Oh, and that holiday known as July 4th? They have to work that day, too. The consolation is that they'll get two comp days off at the end of July. But this doesn't seem like much consolation, given that I can't just up and transfer my campsite reservations to the new days off.

DH works in the video game industry, and anything I can say about their work practices and long hours has already been said more famously before by others. But I am so tired of this sort of thing interfering with our lives. First, we aren't even going away for a whole week, just a few days. Why is it that we cannot even take a four-day weekend without work drama? Second, why is it that DH did not get the trips cleared ahead of time with his boss PRIOR to the schedule change? I told him the dates back in April when I booked the campsites and asked that he get it cleared with a supervisor so that if anything like this occurred (because it ALWAYS occurs) he could prove that it was a long-booked trip he'd already cleared with his boss.

I know this last part didn't happen at all, since when DH called me today it was "verify" the trip dates, meaning that they weren't even written down in his day planner.

Grrrr. I guess my big camping trip this year might involve setting up the tent in the back yard.