Back to the salt mines

My employer does not give its workforce MLK as an automatic holiday; we do all receive eight fixed holidays (the biggies like Memorial Day and Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas, &c.) plus two floating holidays, and the choice is ours whether or not to use those floaters on MLK, or Presidents’ Day, or Columbus Day, or just as extra leave whenever it’s most convenient. I am of course hoarding paid time off in advance of the birth of our baby, so I was planning on working yesterday, but my boss ended up giving everyone on the contract a free day off (he can do this via shuttling discretionary funds around, reimbursing the government for all of our charged hours for the day, I may have mentioned this before but really the bookkeeping aspect is not shady, just business as usual). He did this not because of any passionate belief that we all needed to reflect on the legacy of Dr. King, but because the presidential inauguration was also taking place yesterday, and mass transit was going to be either mobbed (in the case of Metro) or suspended (in the case of VRE) and he did not think it prudent to force everyone to contend with that. I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere about the tension in modern American society between idealism and pragmatism, but then again I’ve never been one to argue with a free day off, whatever the reason.

It actually ended up being a four-day weekend for me. You may have noticed I did not blog on Friday, either; the little girl had been ill this past week, not sleeping well, and had a spectacularly rough night last Thursday night which made a pediatrician’s office visit on Friday seem wise. My wife couldn’t really miss work on Friday, so I ate the leave time. Turned out the pediatrician’s expert opinion was that the little girl simply had a non-exotic, non-scary virus and is still small enough herself that those bugs really take it out of her (not to mention she’s too small to safely take most medicines which would alleviate the symptoms). She’s feeling better now and went back to daycare alongside her brother this morning. No crazy twists and turns in the story, just another (legitimate) reason to bail on work.

The timing was fortuitous, honestly, what with the family visit over the weekend. Very little Bro ended up not joining the group (but promised to visit solo soon) but the rest of us had a refreshingly untroubled visit. Things between me and my Little Sis have always been fine, but there’s a level of volatility between my dad and me, and to a lesser extent my step-mom and me, not to mention between them and my wife (all of which, across the board, I place squarely on my dad and step-mom, it goes without saying) which sometimes makes our get-togethers stressful. But that was at a minimum this time. Probably largely due to the children/grandchildren who are now the de facto center of attention (and can do no wrong in any of the four sets of eyes). But I think another element was that I actually had what everyone always wants: a weekend visit with a day beforehand to get ready and a day afterwards to recover. While home on Friday with the little girl, who napped a lot due to congestion/exhaustion, I got some shopping and housecleaning done and we were totally ready for guests to descend upon us by (late) Saturday morning. The visit didn’t feel rushed, because my fam was able to stay until late in the evening both Saturday and Sunday and drive home all day Monday (they all had the holiday off), nor did anyone feel underfoot since my fam spent their nights at a nearby hotel. And my wife and I caught up on some laundry and such on Monday. If it weren’t for my overriding desire to sometimes use paid leave to take a week off and head someplace warm and beachy (or at least where there’s pools, like Vegas), I would always schedule all two-day family visits around four-day weekends.

All righty, everybody’s all caught up now, so tomorrow I should be able to get back to the excruciatingly geeky post-fodder. Join me then, won’t you?