So much work to do, so little time to do It.




I’m going on vacation next week. Two whole weeks away from here. Two Whole Weeks Away From Here My files at work will be unsupervised, my Happy Meal ™ toys will be left to their own devises, my files will be left in the hands of other people. I want to leave here but I want to take my files with me. I can’t trust that the yahoos that are allegedly taking care of them. I know what they do to them when I’m not there.

It isn’t that I have some sort of sick attachment to my work. I have a healthy attachment to my job.

I am a state employee. I am a state employee in a state with out a budget. If I have an unhealthy thing for my job, I have an even more sick thing for my check. No budget, no check. No house payment, no VISA payment, no utilities, no nothing. A quick trip to the Badlands; Bad Credit, Bad Attitude, Bad Oral Hygiene. I’ll have to pawn the animals, sell the cat tree to an arboretum and sublet doggers crate.

I have to pack! I have to decide what I’m bringing with me! I need to do laundries. I need to decide between plastic crates or actual luggage. It'll will come down to what I am able to find first. I don’t actually know what happened to my luggage and I think all my plastic boxes are in use.

Once I track down the hardware I have to think about the software – my clothes. If I bring nothing but sweatshirts and jeans it guarantees that it will be 95 degrees with 96 percent humidity. The lake, usually about 60 degrees, will magically be 72 and I won’t have a swim suite. If I go the other way, and stock up on tee shirts and shorts it will two weeks of 45 degrees and rain. I’ll wander around in layers of tee shirts and a pair of borrowed sweat pants.

When I come to some sort of middle ground I have to make some decisons about what kind of clothes I’m going to need. I have literally boxes of tee shirts. I have categories

Nice - Tailored tee shirts. Clean, bright, solid colors or tastefully decorated with embroidered florals or other tasteful designs. These are Sunday go to Church tee shirts. Tee shirts appropriate for casual dinners out or trips to museums. Not for hiking or rock climbing.

Clever - Clean, bright colors, adorned with thought provoking messages or ideas – not too clever and rated for all audiences. These are appropriate for trips to town or walks on the beach. Too nice to waste on flora and fauna.

Useful - Cleanish, all ready worn this trip, brought it last year too. Less bright, favorite shirts that have had a little of their brightness washed out. These are good for all outside activities that do not included actual mud baths.

Wash Day - Have not worn this shirt for a reason yet and trying to figure out why. Will by end of washday.

Eww - suitable only for the most dirty jobs. Deep woods hiking in the heat, impenetrable to bugs, wears like iron. Not really flattering.

Add a sweatshirt, sweater, a couple of flannel shirts, two pairs of jeans, and a couple pairs of shorts. More then enough underwear and socks.

After I get my stuff packed I have to shift to the animals and their possessions. It makes my head hurt.

Should I use kitty’s hard plastic box or his soft-sided box? The soft sided one is easier to carry but the hard sided one might be safer in a plane crash. Dogger is going by car. They don’t make soft-sided travel boxes for larger dogs, well, U-Haul does, but…

Dog will be fine. It’s kitty where my anxiety lies. The sources I’ve looked at all say that giving kitty a “sleep aid” is not an option. Not an option for other peoples cats. They don’t know Kitty. He is a walking issue. I have all ready left vets because he was such an issue. He’s going to end up a footnote in a vet textbook – and I have to put him on a plane, hang around an airport for two hours. Alone. With a sure to be deeply angry kitty. We haven’t even talked about Kitty and the prop plane. I don’t like prop planes so I can only imagine what fresh hell is waiting for me.

And. I’m leaving my whole house by itself. For two weeks. By. It. Self. Alone like a stone. All alone. With just my burglar alarm to protect it. The alarm and the drug dealers. My alarm can’t actually shoot an intruder, the drug dealers could. Maybe I can arrange to just have one of their dogs in my back yard. Big Dogs, yard dogs, dogs with out pity. I wonder if they would agree to hoist one up to my roof? Nothing is creepier then seeing a dog on a roof.

Too creepy to rob? I can only hope.