Time Off

Today is Friday. For many, it’s the start of a weekend filled with alternate activities. Alternate, that is, to the normal work world of Monday through Friday. Some will go on a day trip somewhere. Others will shop. Some will do chores like clean the garage or change the oil in the car. Yet others will use the weekend to catch up on household and other things that they didn’t have time to do during the week…laundry, bill-paying, cooking, cleaning.
For us, though, the weekend is work just as during the week, except we don’t have time during the day when the girls are off to school. They’re with us all the time and require supervision all the time. There’s no such thing as leaving the girls at the house and our going off for lunch somewhere. We work 24-7 during the time we’re on duty, so this weekend will actually be more intense as far as work is concerned.
The nice thing about this arrangement, though, is that we get a week off every fourth week. We work three weeks on and have a full week off. That takes some getting used to, because we just aren’t familiar with taking that much time off in one chunk, and doing so every four weeks.
Sometimes we go someplace and visit the kids or whoever. Sometimes we just sit at the house and enjoy the quiet. Other times, we’ll take in a concert or theater if something good is playing. Often, we’ll find time during that time to see family, whether hers or mine.
We don’t have our next week off for a couple more weeks. So this week, we’ll enjoy having the girls with us and working with them on things that are of importance to their well-being. Meanwhile, we’ll look forward, in the back of our minds, to a couple of weeks from now when we can relax and take some time to ourselves.