I've never wasted vacation time on any of my houses. What I've done instead is used time away from the office to get COMPLETELY away.
Of course, while I'm away, I think about all the things I have to do when I get back.
Sometimes, I'm so bored with relaxing after a couple of days that I volunteer to help people I meet with their chores.
I should qualify that with "unless I'm camping." There are so many chores involved with camping that I can't wait till meals are over and dishes are done, so I can take it easy.
Anyway, in 1992 we rented a cottage in County Mayo in Ireland. There was an elderly gent next door, with a son who was an electrician in Massachusetts. He was up early on a June morning painting his bungalow walls.
I mean early. Sunrise was at 4:15 a.m., dawn 30 minutes before, and dusk about 11:30 p.m.
This was closer to sunrise, and I went to sit with my coffee on the front step. The gent and I began to talk, and in 15 minutes I had a brush in hand and was taking care of the window trim.
I finished before my family could catch me at it. Two pints of Guinness for my trouble at the pub up the road that evening.
Sometimes, I've longed to own a vacation house, especially when the best I could afford in the Philadelphia area was an 11-{-foot-wide Queen Village rowhouse.
For a couple of the rowhouse years, before school limited vacation scheduling, we spent a week in mid-June at houses in Wild Dunes, a resort outside Charleston, S.C. (Those houses might have been good investments had Hurricane Hugo not flattened them.)
I learned about the joys of Bulls Eye shellac-based primer because hard water in the water heaters did in the first-floor ceilings, and replacement and repair was constant.
Sometimes, I've fantasized to escape reality.
We spent a few days on Cape Cod waiting for approval on the mortgage for our second house, while still not being able to sell the first.
I looked at every house for sale between Barnstable and Rock Harbor, realizing after a while that with what was going on back home, the best I could afford was a hut at Plimoth Plantation - if the goat was willing to share.
Once we took over a colleague's time-share in Hilton Head, a two-story condo with a canal running through the backyard.
Posted along the canal were signs that read: "Please keep your dog on a leash at all times."
Alligators.
The master bedroom of this place was palatial compared with ours, with a ceiling fan above the bed and a soaking tub surrounded by tile in the bath, out of which you stepped onto marble floors.
It also had central air-conditioning, something we wanted but couldn't afford without cutting the grocery list down to hot dogs and ersatz Postum.
When we got home, I had a ceiling fan installed above our bed.
I've noticed something since we last bought a house, the one we've lived in now for almost seven years: When I go on vacation, I focus on relaxing and enjoying myself every minute.
One reason is that Emmy, our beagle, cannot accompany us on a lot of long trips - she's cared for either by our next-door neighbors or by a regular house-sitter.
Someone is watching the property and keeping Emmy company. So I don't worry.
The other reason is I guess I didn't like the other two houses. They were just so problematic, always needing something, and when you finished redoing a room, or the wiring, or the yard, it just didn't measure up.
I couldn't seem to escape thinking about those houses. I tried pushing projects to completion before I left for vacation so I wouldn't think about them, I but never finished - even when I got back.
I tried to envision what living in a really nice house would be like.
That doesn't mean I don't think about things I'd like to tackle when I get back now.
It's just that I rest up for them.
