The Pensioner came at me with a calendar today. What did I want to do this summer. Mainly he means when do you want to take PTO from work.

Sigh… Again… It is always best if *I* work around other people’s schedules. I have the MOST vacation time of anyone (except The Pensioner) and I don’t have a centralized bricks-and-mortar office to go to so as long as I’m at the stand-up meeting on days I’m scheduled to work, nobody cares where I am.

Last summer I pretty much hit the sweet spot in terms of schedule. We had two groups visiting the yooperland for approximately a week each. They came at different times, which was good but we would’ve figgered it out if they came simultaneously. What worked out was I had great fun spending vacay time with them while they were here. Then, since I didn’t have to hustle back to The Planet Ann Arbor to work at Cubelandia (which has been empty for a few years now), I could take the next week to reset the moomincabin refrigerator and laundry and whatever. I had to work but since I didn’t have to commute (except to walk out to the Lyme Lounge), I had plenty of time to get things done.

The Comm and Grandroobly’s house was 15-20 minutes away from the moominbeach. They moved to the cabin for the whole summer. When I was a kid, we moved the day after school ended and came back on Labor Day. I was issued a bushel basket to pack my clothes and stuff in. In my adult life, I am happy that my parents were able to pass this property on to us. But I have spent my adult life on The Planet Ann Arbor and I like to spend at least some of the summer down here. I cannot miss pea shelling season at the farmers market for one thing.

Because of that I manage things differently at the moomincabin than The Comm did. (My kids are totally tired of hearing about this.) I leave non-perishable food items on the shelves and things like condiments and butter in the refrigerator throughout the summer. Usually there are a few things in the freezer. Anything else, we use or pack up to take downstate. Or toss if I don’t feel like it’s something worth keeping. We don’t compost up there because bears. At the end of the summer, everything goes. Downstate or in the garbage, which also goes downstate.

Linens? I make a more-or-less weekly run to the Up North laundromat for linens and clothing. I stopped using sheets up there after The Comm died (or maybe even before). I have a VERY comfortable (and ancient) cotton LLBean sleeping bag and we have TONS of blankets and comforters if it gets cold. Much easier to schlep a sleeping bag up there than muck around with sheets. DISCLAIMER! I don’t expect anyone else to schlep a sleeping bag up there. I am happy for people to use sheets and I am happy to launder them 🧡🧡🧡 I want people to be as comfortable as possible in our semi-rustic cabin.

I have a harder time dealing with my company about vacay time. Oh my boss doesn’t care when I take vacay. He is very accommodating. The issue is that the company likes people to schedule their time well in advance. I know there are corporate accounting reasons for this and I am not complaining even though I don’t totally understand them. I have been a bean counter in my day albeit not for a global corporation like the one I work for. But I get it. Still it’s hard to schedule vacation when you are traveling to your own vacation property and not taking a cruise or something.

My bean counting happened back in the Jurassic Age when I was well known as a good and honest treasurer for parent/teacher organizations in town. I think my favorite memory is when I came home from a middle school “fun night” event with gallon ziplock bags of [mostly] small bills. Those bags were sitting on my kitchen counter when a friend (see previous post) unexpectedly came by for whine and said something like “looks like you’re dealing drugs” 🤣 By the next morning that mess was sorted and counted and ready to take to the bank. Where I was well known for depositing perfectly counted money. Those were the days. I miss them sometimes.

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