Alas, this is the last day of my vacation and tomorrow it's back to the mines for me. You know, when Europeans say they've been on vacation, they usually mean they've just spent a month on the coast of France, all the while steadily receiving their salaries. When, I, an American, say it, I mean I had two extra days off to do the laundry - whoot! Oh well. There are so many things to get all het up about - health care, anyone? - when it comes to the general better standard of living of your basic lucky ass European that I won't focus on vacation time (they get three TIMES what we do! It's not fair!) but instead, I will tell you what I did with mine.
When I started in on this mini vacation, I actually wrote down some goals - jesus, I'm getting more American all the time. Clean the house, was one, and take out the winter clothes and, on a more cheerful note, go hiking and make some art. And I've done more or less all of those things if you are, as I am, somewhat flexible about precise definitions. For example, I did take out my winter clothes and right now they are strewn all over my bedroom. And I made art. . well. Okay. I confess: I went to Michaels crafts (oh yeah, there was a secret go shopping goal in there as well and I'm happy to report that I totally got that one down) and bought - wait for it - a latch hook rug kit! With sunflowers on it! Yeah! Thank god I went to art school so I know I'm actually approaching it ironically because otherwise my own perilously close resemblance to a gaga gramma as I sit in my tacky rocking chair and laboriously hook bits of acrylic yarn might send me round the bend. Fuck it though, it's kind of fun, and I like trying to follow the graph, not to mention that it's going to make a fine Christmas present for my mother (poor woman. One might think she had reached the age where her children were not still handing her some uncouth hand crafted nightmare with an air of humble expectancy but, well, sucks to be her, I still am.) I already screwed the pattern up a little but I have hopes or recovering it somehow. Ha. And, I started knitting myself a simple black hat, which gave me an idea for a more complex hat which I'm going to make for pretty much everyone else I know.
The great thing about crafts as opposed to art and it may be the only real difference, is that you can do crafts, or parts of crafts, or the kind of crafts I do, while watching TV. That is why - purely for my crafts, you understand - yesterday I watched most of Beetlejuice, the second half of Jurassic Park III, Mission Impossible and Ladder 49. Of the four I think the second half of Jurassic Park III wins, mostly because Beetlejuice is already well ensconced as a classic and I can recite it anyway, Mission Impossible should really have been titled Mission Incomprehensible, because it was, and Ladder 49, which I'm glad I finally got around to seeing since it's set in Baltimore and my friend C is, I think, on the DVD version of it talking about being a Baltimore City firefighter, (she wasn't on the TV last night though) was sad at the end and awfully damn earnest the rest of the time. Jurassic Park III has no pretensions; it just has people fleeing dinosaurs and, I don't know about you, (maybe I don't know art, but I know what I like) but honey, people fleeing bloodthirsty dinosaurs is JUST what the movies was invented for.
And I did go hiking, too. On my vacation.
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