My weeks are completely screwed up, which happens every several years due to whatever happens to the calendar that brings my annual cabin trip into the week adjacent to Labor Day weekend (week 35) as opposed to the week it normally occupies in the calendar (week 34). Or maybe Labor Day moves and I’m always on vacation in week 35. Whatever the reason, it’s throwing me off.
There are several things that happen in the week we are on vacation that I’m used to processing from the comfort of a cabin
- Lakeville North High School schedules are released so my son spends the day texting his friends to collaborate/commiserate.
- There’s a gap week between the cabin trip and the start of school.
- The weather is hot and humid but fall arrives just as we are leaving the cabin.
- The state fair kicks off as we are heading home.
- Football makes an appearance sometime while we are gone so we leave in not-football time and return home in yes-football time.
- It’s still August so the year isn’t almost over yet.
1 and 3 are net positive changes and easily handled. Elijah has spent quality time with his friends and fall-like weather at the cabin is like winning the lottery.
2 and 6 feel like a scam for Elijah and me respectively due to the shift. Vacation will turn into school rules and homework too quickly for him, and September is basically Halloween making Thanksgiving plans to buy Christmas presents. It’s practically next year.
4 is hard to measure. I don’t go to the state fair but people do and that changes traffic. We will see.
5. That’s the actual problem. I’m not a football fan or watcher though I do keep up to make conversation. Years of being a Huskers / Oilers / Steelers fan before climate change and expanded league schedules taught me that football is part of the fall when it’s cold. This is clearly no longer true.
Even if you combine 5 and 3 by giving me a cold weekend at the cabin with football starting, it’s still wrong because the mall got the big helmets out so it’s football in the humidity.
I’m not sure when the calendar course-corrects but I look forward to things going back to their proper order, just in time for Elijah to start college… likely during cabin week.
Happy vacation to me!
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a bananas.
Groucho Marx