My VRD was a success

Do you ever need a vacation after your vacation? I ALWAYS DO.

About six years ago, I implemented a personal vacation system in which I always add a VRD -- Vacation Recovery Day -- on the end of any vacation I take. The VRD is usually the Monday following a long weekend or week on the road, and today was indeed a scheduled VRD.

Typically I use a VRD to do several things: laundry, laundry and laundry. Today, though, I used it to undecorate the Christmas tree and the house, as well as try to catch up on a little scrapbooking. Emphasis on TRY.

My day began with actually being able to fall back asleep after hugging the boys goodbye this morning, which was unexpected and welcome. About an hour later, I was awakened by squirrels in the attic, which we thought we'd banished back in the summer when they chewed through our air conditioning electrical system. THEY'RE BACK. That was not a nice thing to wake up to.

I spent the next couple of hours on the computer. All that Internet surfing and catching up on blogs yielded surprisingly few tangible results. Other people's blogs aren't folding my laundry, fer sure.

Next I got to work taking down my Christmas decorations. I have an easy system for the garland:



I've found that when the next year rolls around, it's easiest to go up in the attic and grab these labeled bags, rip right into them and throw them away. Disposable storage for the garland. Gotta love it.

Next on my list was a more complicated task. I have always been fond of my non-disposable ornament storage boxes. That is, until one year I accidentally separated all the tops from each of the three levels of bottoms that they came with, thinking that because they are all identical, they would be interchangeable. FALSE. FALSEHOOD OF THE HIGHEST MAGNITUDE.

Once separated and put back together in a different order, they ceased to seal correctly. And if one were to lift the boxes above one's head to store them in the attic between Christmases, one would be knocked senseless when the bottom two levels of said boxes came unhinged and crashed down on one's head. (I would like to say that having this happen one time taught me a lesson, but apparently I am a little stubborn and it had to happen more than once. Perhaps three or four times.)

So TODAY -- my glorious Christmas VRD -- was my day to remedy this situation. I spent over an hour trying all of the boxes in various combinations. (Each box has four parts: one lid and three compartments.) I had to find a way to fit All Six Sets (SIX.) together so that they wouldn't fall apart when shaken. I was finally successful.

Then I labeled each top with a letter A through F and each of the corresponding bottoms with 1-2-3, as such:



Now next year when I get them all out, I can spread them out willy-nilly but will always be able to tell what bottoms go with what tops so that I can spare myself any concussions in 2010. At least, that's the goal.



ARE YOU STILL READING? If you are, I'm impressed.

I rewarded myself for this Job Well Done with a couple of hours of scrapbooking before everyone got home.



I had to work all the way back in August, when we spent a weekend in Marietta and Nathaniel lost his first tooth right before school started.


I got caught up to Christmas in Jake's scrapbook and up to September in Nathaniel's. If I just had one more day to work on them, I could get caught up in Nathaniel's and move on to Nick's ...

And guess what. I am so good at anticipating my own needs that I scheduled a SECOND VRD for tomorrow. So I don't go back to work until Wednesday.

That sound you just heard was a very self-satisfied sigh.