On Vacation

When I started to write this post, I got the word "befrazzlement" stuck in my head. I know it's not a real word. It's just something that my subconscious mind, while trying to verbalize why I need a vacation, constructed when it couldn't come up with anything suitably full of good solid Anglo-Saxon fricatives.

Maria von Trapp (the real-life Maria on whose life "The Sound of Music" was based) wrote that when she first came to America and knew very little English, she mistakenly thought that the German word "bekommen," which means "get," was the same as a similar-sounding English word. When she went to do her grocery shopping, other people gave her some very strange looks when she said that she wanted to become cauliflower.

I haven't had any mishaps as embarrassing as that lately, but I have been feeling as if I'm mentally juggling too much. Not long ago, I got discombobulated by a tiny, unimportant, completely irrelevant change in my work. Some computer files got renamed by The Powers That Be and consequently ended up in a different place in an alphabetically indexed list, which shouldn't have been a big deal, but I had a very hard time concentrating for the next few days. I haven't taken any vacation time since the Christmas holidays, and I really need a break.

If I had Bev's skill with graphics, I would illustrate this post with a befrazzled cauliflower in front of a computer vociferously voicing fricatives. Alas, that's not one of my talents, so you'll just have to imagine what it would look like.

Starting now, I'm on vacation from work, blogging, and pointless cultural expectations. I'll go barefoot, eat chocolate-dipped ice cream cones and gummy bears, and lie down in the grass and admire the dandelions. Possibly all at the same time. I won't carry a purse or any other artifacts of being a proper responsible adult. The weeds in my garden can have a reprieve from execution. I'll talk to myself and sing goofy songs if I feel like it. I'll lean my head back over the edge of the couch and contemplate what it would be like to walk around upside-down on the ceiling. As for that annoying item of modern technology that rings when other people feel like chattering—it can go away and play with its friend, the alarm clock, in the land of disconnection.

I'll be back to posting in a couple of weeks. Don't get in too much trouble while I'm gone, y'all.