What Vacation?

I am usually the first person counting down the minutes until the end of summer, wondering how I’m going to make it through the long, long days. But this summer, I concede, was too short. School starts on Monday and I’m looking around wondering where the days went, convinced that the Earth is spinning faster and the days are honestly getting shorter. I mean, I am still putting away papers from last school year – where am I going to put the influx from this one? And, oh yeah, when is my vacation?

For the most part, we stayed around town this summer. We have no annual vacation spot, and this year was empty of gatherings with out-of-state family and friends. So the kids did some day camps and we enjoyed the local activities, but I longed for a break.

Of course, traveling with two young kids is really no vacation. I still have to pack, clean, plan, and make meals and snacks for my family. It’s the same stuff in a different place, usually with less sleep. If anything, it’s more work, not the “vacation” of my childless years when a getaway was really getting away. Sometimes I forget this.

And so we planned a weekend trip. Our ultimate destination was Ben & Jerry’s Factory Store in Vermont, driven by our universal love of ice cream. We had a hotel booked, but no other constraints, so we let the road lead us and we stumbled across a few unexpected gems along the way. A friend recommended Yankee Candle Village in Deerfield, Massachusetts, which was a perfect pitstop on our drive up. The highlight of this large complex is their Bavarian Christmas Village where it “snows” every four minutes. Walking through the attached toy store, we were surprised to find Santa at his desk making his Naughty and Nice lists! Our kids were thrilled, especially when they learned they were still on the Nice list. But when their Dad was warned that he was on the Naughty list for hijacking the cookies and milk left out for Santa last year, they started conspiring to save him. A rare moment of siblings united.

Back on the road, filled with Christmas spirit, our first planned stop at Santa's Land in Putney, Vermont now seemed ideal. I had low expectations of this park, opened in 1957 and rescued from foreclosure last year, but when we pulled into the almost empty parking lot, I was concerned. The $10 entry fee and welcoming staff made it worth the gamble. It would be a stretch to call it an “amusement park”, more like a 1950’s alpine village, but that day it was all ours. In the center, it had a good old-fashioned swingset with a metal slide placed right on the grassy ground. You may see safety violations, but I saw my childhood, and it was refreshing. There was a bumpy unmonitored giant slide which we rode down on potato sacks before walking right back up the hill to go again. We toured the property multiple times on “Santa’s Alpine Railroad”, choosing a different car each trip, but passing on the driver’s offer to repeat the tour info. The one attendant running all the “kiddie rides” (carousel, cars, planes) let us choose one, and rode with us for as long as we wanted. There was a little schoolhouse showing The Year Without A Santa Claus on an old television, and an unattended gift shop that carried Dora the Explorer mittens among other random items. And there was Santa again, this time in a small shack suffering the summer heat with just a box fan to keep him cool. There were deer and llamas roaming the property, and we had to watch for poison ivy, but the kids loved it. No crowds, no parades, no characters, no long walks, just their own personal playground.

That night we made it to our hotel, and our trip turned from kitschy back to ordinary. The kids fought over the beds, we bickered through dinner, and watched television until our eyes closed. We awoke, had breakfast, and headed out. They complained all the way to Ben & Jerry’s, and I nagged my husband for buying ice cream before the tour. We saw a farm, watched cheese being packaged, learned to make maple syrup and apple cider, played minigolf, and marveled at the beauty of nature. Then we went home and I did laundry. Yes, it was a trip, but it still didn’t feel like we had a real vacation.

Then, the other day my son thanked me for giving him a great summer. He enjoyed the camps that filled most of July, but he cherished his unscheduled August days which blended late mornings lounging in pajamas with spontaneous drives to parks, play spaces, new restaurants, and even a museum of Pez. Nights stretched late, with long walks at dusk, dinners at the beach, movies on the couch. He enjoyed getting to spend time with his little sister, and I loved seeing them interact so much more than they get to during the school year when their schools and schedules differ. And despite all his complaining while we traveled, it seems our meandering trip through Vermont was a highlight.

“I love these stress-free days, Mom. I don’t have a care in the world,” he said. Now that’s vacation.

The Problem With Multi-Tasking

When summer starts, I always have big hopes of getting some major projects done, excited to tackle all those unfinished jobs that stare at me from every corner of my house. It doesn’t take more than a few days before I remember that, “Oh yeah, this is the kids’ vacation, not my vacation,” and I recognize that their ever-present bodies may interfere with my ambitious plans for painting, creating, and reorganizing. So I try to use each playdate and camp day to make inroads.

But, to be honest, I have been highly disappointed in the results. I am furious when a valuable chunk of “down time” has passed, yet my To Do list remains the same. How can so many hours go by with no real sign of accomplishment when I feel like I am doing, doing, doing the whole time?

And then it hit me. Maybe that was the problem. When I thought about how those “wasted” days had been structured I realized that nothing got done because I was doing this, that, and the other thing all at once. I have always been very proud of my ability to multitask, but I started to think that what I considered a talent may actually be an affliction.

Research indicates that multitasking is actually a misnomer. You may think you are doing multiple things at once, but your brain is actually switching back and forth between tasks, which means none ever get your full attention. To illustrate the effects, consider those stories in which someone is switching between two phone calls until they eventually cross the lines and mix up the callers. It doesn’t usually end well.

My descent into the multitasking black hole begins as soon as I sit in front of a computer. I may start out with a five-minute job to complete, but I often find myself losing hours at the screen. I’m not usually one to “surf” the internet, but the waves sure take me in when I start my five-minute task, then remember it’s time to pay a bill or verify an account. I will inevitably check email, then Facebook, then remember a back-to-school item I meant to buy online which I must price check at three different sites (and ebay). That triggers an investigation of vacation ideas for spring break. On the home page, I’ll catch an unbelievable celebrity or weird news headline that I just have to read, then I’ll check Twitter and find some article that I want to print or share. Then it’s back to email where I notice how cluttered my inbox is. When I start to clean it out, I will find something I was supposed to respond to last week or some forms that need to be filled out. This reminds me of that activity I was going to sign the kids up for, which then leads me to compare that activity with similar programs, which then requires me to check my calendar to decide which day works best……and then I look at the clock and my jaw drops. Lots done but nothing finished, except the day.

My other major pitfall is housework. There is always laundry to do, a dishwasher to be unloaded or loaded (usually both), toys to be put away, messes to be straightened up, papers to be filed. But when I let those mundane tasks distract me, I never even get to start the bigger jobs.

So now I try to narrow my focus. When I see a large pocket of alone time on the horizon (like a whole day at Grandmas!), I pick one job to do from start to finish. I may have another on deck in case there is extra time, but that is considered a bonus and won’t lead to frustration if not completed.

I do all computer tasks the night before so I can stay far away from the screen, and I promise myself I will close my eyes to mess. I also don’t use those days to call customer service, not for anything. Sitting on hold may seem like an ideal time to send emails, file, or do all those other aforementioned computer tasks, but the constant interruptions from recorded voices telling me my call will soon be answered leave me wondering, “Now where was I?”

I have found playing music (not Muzak) helps me to get moving faster and stay focused on a big job. Unless I hear a song that reminds me of a dance I saw once that I must then find on YouTube which inevitably connects me to a Muppet version of the same song (there’s a Muppet version of everything), that then references a must-see version of The Rainbow Connection, that reminds me of a bill I have to pay……