Kim invited me to go to her Great Aunt Jean’s house on Lake Keuka in New York again this year. In exchange for a couple of hours of planting, I get to spend a relaxing weekend with a pal on a beautiful lake in another state. We were originally going to take the baby (Anthony), but Aunt Jean requested Travis for his entertainment value.
It takes about 6.5ish hours to drive there, and we left home a little before 6 on Thursday. We got there late and talked to Aunt Jean for a bit, so we didn’t get to sleep until late. We got up Friday morning and started working on the planting. The highlight of that was when the police stopped to tell us that they “couldn’t have naked people running around” after Travis went behind the garage to poop (!) and came out naked at the exact wrong time. Whatever, white copper intimidated by black junk (even if it’s on a 2 year-old). The plants all got planted and everything looked nice (the plant stuff takes less time every year, since they did the perennials and bushes before I was involved and they know how they want it).
Here’s some of Aunt Jean’s landscaping (though I had little to do with this part):
Same ducks, different state:
Lake pictures because it is pretty and I don’t care that I probably took the same ones last year:
Some friends of Aunt Jean came over to use the boat to go out fishing Friday evening, and they took Kim and Travis out for a short boat ride before they got started:
The lake was pretty quiet Saturday morning, so Kim took Travis and I out in the boat. Here’s Travis watching his mom figure out how to drive the boat:
Eventually he got to drive the boat:
More Travis, just because he charmed me over the weekend:
Some of Kim’s relatives were around while we were there; here’s a picture of Travis and one of Kim’s mom’s cousins:
Aunt Jean wanted a tree trimmed because she thought some of the branches were obstructing the view. Before I knew what was happening, Kim had done this (I found a saw and made her finish the job):
Travis knows how to work iPhones:
Sunday, I woke up with a stomach bug since I had been hanging out with a pre-schooler for days. GROSS. I puked twice and slept it off, but I still feel a little off. We left Monday around 11 and got home before 6, but we endured a good hour of the shrillest screeching I have ever heard as we passed through Cleveland. Travis got an ear infection while we were in New York, and fortunately, his doctor called in a prescription for antibiotics, but the poor kid had diarrhea from the antibiotics on the way home. No amount of whatever those kid-distracting gadgets are called could distract him from having to pooooOOOOOP.
Anyway, it was a nice trip. I have to say that the trip came at what turned out to be a really good time this year. I did take 2 weeks off (last week and this week) around our weekend in NY, so it’s been really nice to not think about work after all the DEPLOYMENT nonsense. Other than being asked if I could work last Friday (I could not, as I was in NY), I haven’t been called with questions or anything, which is a relief.
The bigger relief is more awkward to talk about. Business has been bad at work, and through “town hall meetings,” segment-wide emails, and generally widespread (and cascading managerial) panic and insecurity, the threat of me being laid off or our location closing has been CONSTANT for a while now…especially since my coworker had been trying to get me to speculate with her whether she would be let go (being part-time) or I would be let go (being newer) first if the time came FOR YEARS. I generally believe that everything will work out the way it should because I’ve been lucky so far, so I didn’t think I was letting myself get too worked up about the whole thing. I never took any steps to re-familiarize myself with regular pharmacy or look into other options (because, frankly, UGH), but I had stopped putting extra towards the mortgage and asked Brian if we would be OK if I wasn’t working for a while.
The first official day of my vacation, last Tuesday, coworker Cathy texted me to let me know she’d been laid off (only one of my readers at all knows her, and I already told him anyway, so this isn’t, like, telling her business). I talked to her and Bennett on the phone about it, and I’ve talked a lot about it to my peeps, and in all of this, 2 things become clear: 1) As annoying and inept as she often is, this sucks and everybody feels bad and is sad, and 2) I was waaaaaay more worried about this than I realized. Like, waaaaay more worried. I am assuming, hopefully correctly, that this means we’re not closing and the rest of us are safe for the immediate future. The relief (and a little bit of survivor guilt) is CRAZY.