Vacation

It should have been a tough weekend. Full of bitterness and anger.

But it wasn't.

A few weeks ago we planned a four day holiday. We were going to leave on Saturday morning, bright and early, for Montreal for an overnight. Then on Sunday we'd visit Phil on our way down to Boston were we'd have a couple of days off before working there on Wednesday and Thursday. Not much of a vacation but it was all we were going to get this summer.

Then on Friday last I was doing a series of consultations and when I looked at their calander I saw they had me in again on Monday. I checked that against my own calander and found that we'd made a booking error. I couldn't be on vacation because I was booked to work. I don't know how we did it, how we made that mistake, but we did. I called Joe quickly and told him to cancel the hotels, the cars, the visits with friends.

It was impossible to cancel the work day because the therapist would be on maternity leave by the time I got back from Boston. It was now or never. There is no way I would let our mistake get in the way. So, it was cancelled. I had tears in my eyes when I made the call, but I knew it was the right call.

So, leaving work on Friday knowing that our weekend would not be as we planned was not a happy event. But we talked about what to do and both of us were feeling cheated - we take few vacations and something always seems to come up. On Saturday morning we were chatting about cabbage rolls. After all these years together you've got to talk about something and we were talking about cabbage rolls. The decision was made, we'd make a wack of cabbage rolls, some to eat now and the rest to freeze for later.

Saturday we bought the stuff and made the sauce. Sunday we made the stuffing and boiled the cabbage and rolled the rolls. It was fun. And satisfying. And oddly restful. When done we'd made 29 huge cabbage rolls and had the bulk of them in the freezer parceled into foil pans ready for reheating.

It was my first really big cooking adventure using the house wheelchair and I found my self quite agile despite sitting down. We worked as a real team together, each doing our parts contributing one to the other. We put a lot of work into those cabbage rolls.

And yet.

Yet.

I feel rested.

Like I'd vacationed. Had some real time off.

I'm OK with going to work this morning. I don't mind at all that we didn't busy up the days of with going away and staying in hotels and navigating an often inaccessible landscape. I'm OK with our vacation, right in our own home.