It is days like this, the day after a vacation, holiday or break when I don’t feel like working, moving or even breathing, or days like this that feel like a combination of the listlessness of Monday, the overwhelmingness of Tuesday, and the desperation of Thursday, that I realize why I am such a bitter time off anticipator. Call me crazy, but when it comes to vacations, holidays or any time off, I have the bitter curse. Whenever I get closer to a vacation, I start looking with bitter apprehension to its end.
For instance, we had been planning a vacation to Hawaii for a year and a half (and my planning, I mean my wife was setting up hotels, getting airline tickets and getting rental cars. I did my part by requesting time off at work). For a year and a half, I could have miserable, bitter days. I could get kicked and punchied in the metaphorical face, over and over and again. I would just stand up, over and over again, against the metaphorical bully and because I knew, no matter how far away it was, somewhere on the horizon, there was a Hawaiian island that was calling my name. It would say, “Get punched and kicked metaphorically over and over again, because you will visit me.” So for that year and half I took it. Then, my bitter self sabatogue started kicking in. I started thinking about the vacation. Man, that is going to be a long flight. Oh, man, I’m going to have to pack stuff. Oh man, is our babysitter going to take their job literally and sit on our kids? What about all the Hawaiian laws? I don’t know if I have them down yet. Could I be breaking a law by wearing swim trunks that don’t have Hawaiian flowers, or shirts that don’t say Surf’s up? How many hours late am I supposed to be for a function? I don’t want to show up too early for being lazy…Which island are we going to again? It’s not the Alaskan one right?
Those were just the questions I had about the vacation. Then I started have post vacation anxiety. Oh man, I’m going to have to be back at work in a week. I’m going to have to answer all kinds of questions when I get back.
“So how was your vacation?” (It was good, until I had to come back and talk to you) “It was fun.”
“What did you do?” (Laid around did nothing, until the end of the vacation, where we made a mad dash to do something fun so I could tell you we did something fun.) “We went on this boat snorkeling. It was fun.” (Don’t ask for details, I don’t want to talk to you.)
“Why are you still super pale after spending a week in Hawaii?” (Because I laid around all day, like I could have at home. I only went outside when it was too late. Plus there is this new thing called SPF 100 that takes all the fun out of sunburns.) “I just used SPF 50 and it worked!”
“So are you just so relaxed right now?” (I just got back from a tropical paradise where I was lazy all day and had a horrendous 5 hour flight that made me go back in time two hours, and made my sleep schedule go off and now I am at work, talking to you about vacation when I really should be catching up on the hours of work you didn’t do for me. Yeah, totally relaxed.) “Yeah, I’m totally relaxed.”
This Christmas was like that except instead of a whole week, it was a Wednesday. A holiday where society starts celebrating in the middle of September, gets kicked into high gear the day after Halloween and “officially starts” the minute after you finish your last gobble of turkey, all so I could get off of work an hour early on Christmas Eve, take the kids to a “light display”, in the cold air, run home, get my kids off the Extra Strength Christmas Crack Caffiene they must have smuggled into their dinner drinks, get all our presents under the tree and finish off my last bit of Xbox DLC before passing out into a coma of weariness. Only to get woken up at 7 am, because my oldest had been patiently waiting since 5:30 am to Get these things opened!
The anticipation is killing me! I can’t wait to open all these gifts and be littered with wrapping paper! Being the family genius of electronics, I can’t wait to set up every cord, and update every electronic and set up every Itune, and put batteries in every new device! I can’t wait to be interupted during every nap, by cries of “Dad, the thing isn’t working!” or “Dad, look at this new thing that seems exciting but will never be used again!” and I can’t wait for the “Dad, I spilled this thing on that thing and I need help getting that thing off of that thing!” but the thing I can’t for the most?
“So how was your Christmas?” (See above.) “It was fun.”
“So what did you get?” (A mid weak break that was more work than it was a holiday.) “I got a new XBox.” (That I bought myself.)
“So nice relaxing, uh day off?” (Yeah, my day off was so relaxing compared to your two week vacation that you get every year so I don’t.) “Yeah, pretty much.”
For those of you that are back to work, welcome back our misery. For those of you still on vacation, I hope to ask you if you had a nice relaxing two weeks off.
Arrrrghhhhh
Bitter Anticipation Ben
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a lot of money to fly & lay around in hawaii when you can do that at home.
using 50 sunscreen , i am darker than i have ever been in my life..even now & i have been outside in 2 months.
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The outdoors are too much for a bitter person like me.
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yes outdoors is bitter & bitter cold..indoors is bitter also.
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it must be so hard for you to go outside in the 70 degree weather.
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that’s when it’s not hard, but no one has 70 all the time
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Not even Brazil?
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i can’t leave the country…is that the temp. in brazil?
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You’ve been banned from leaving? Brazil is 90 year round.
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yes truly dr banned me from leaving the country in 84..no hot climates… mosquito terrorists
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Your doctor is not very nice.
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he didn’t want me to catch anything from anymore mosquitoes…my internist, in the year 2000 , said no more flying, i hugged her..it’s funny that she put me on the no fly list..she’s from iran.lol
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ha ha that is awesome. My mother-in-law before she passed was on the no fly list. cause she got a blood clot.
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oh no,i’m sorry. i just got strep throat & the flu from the plane air, the last time i flew to atlanta
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That never happens in planes…
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never always.my internist said you get sick every time.
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So do you just drive everywhere? how are you ever going to go to south dakota and see mt. rushmore?
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no i go on the train now.d.c. to charleston.chas to dc.. dc to florida..orlando to florence s.c. , b/c the train does not like to go to the beach,fro some reason…
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I don’t think the train goes to SD. You will need to rent an RV.
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i won’t do it or an igloo. my aunt said my husband could sell an igloo to an eskimo.if i had known that was a bad thing, before i married him
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So did you get rid of him or do you try to live in the igloo and sell ketchup popsicles to a woman in white gloves.
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if i had sold popsicles they would have been heinz. he tried to get rid of me by pulling in front of a car he said was going 90 , on my side of car.
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So it was an amicable split?
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you silly.yes when your h tries to knock you off, you split ,to the ER
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So it wasn’t amicable?
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he was nice for 10 years ,i thought, until the day he said do you want to go fishing or shopping..if i had said fishing, i would be lacy peterson ( bottom of pond).we had the same exact boat too.
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painful. is he in jail?
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was painful. i landed in his lap / bmw…he didn’t land in jail.
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even on bob newhart..howard was going to take this pilot’s place, b/c he had the asian flu, but they found out it was just the regular flu & let him fly & get everyone on plane sick.
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Pingback: In case you missed it…because you were playing with your shiny new toys | Ben's Bitter Blog
I got a great gift – a hedgehog. Now that I think about it, he kinda reminds me of you. 🙂
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He is socially prickly? Have you named him Sonic or Bitter Ben?
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Right now, he’s beyond socially prickly. His official name is Lord Nelson (Horatio Hedgehog). That may be the problem – he thinks he should be treated like a lord. I mainly call him Mr Grumpy.
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I don’t know how titles go in England, but I am just a Baron of Bitterness so I think he outranks me. We have a hampster that my daughter named after Seattle called Cloudy, but I call her Salty.
Isn’t Haratio Hedgehog the dude from Toy Story 3?
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We think the animals are dumb because they don’t recognize their names; they think we’re dumb because we can’t remember them.
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Just call them master and they will enjoy bossing you around.
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OMG, this was the pinnacle of Truth. I would suggest that you should pen the 12 Hells of Christmas, if it wasn’t irreligious. And the LET DOWN the following day. No Christmas music, no Merry Christmas, no jingling Elves, just a mad rush to return what everyone hated or just plain sucked. We are a nation of self-sadists.
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I don’t think I could think of twelve things. I can only think of like 6 and that would make for a pathetic list. I just want to move on from Christmas posts anyways. Maybe one New Year’s Post and I’m done with the holiday thing for good. Then it is bitter from then on out.
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LOL, too lazy to make a funny post……but you are right, Christmas is SO Three Days Ago….
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I’m too lazy to do funny most of the time, which is why you see such a serious tone to my posts.
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What-EVER. LOL
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Vacations make me bitter because I always get sick. Take this vacation for example: The first week I was on a cruise and I spent the entire time gobbling motion sickness pills. Now that I’m in my second week, I have a cold. Nothing says vacation like nausea and copious amounts of snot.
Lovely.
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So I’m not the only that gets sick on my vacations?
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I have to go in on Monday for a little while, and if it’s anything like last Monday was, I’m going to need the two days off that follow it.
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Wow, you really screwed up your vacation schedule. I am a master planning of buffering vacations up against weekends. Coming in on a Monday? Amateur. I’m sure you’ll learn next year though.
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My favorite line: “So how was your vacation?” (It was good, until I had to come back and talk to you).
I do like my coworkers, but having to return to work and be asked such questions just reminds me of why I didn’t (never) want to return to work.
Hawaii looks like a very nice place to be bitter in.
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I think I have scared my co-workers enough that they don’t expect much more than a grunt when they ask, but I am working even harder to get them not to ask at all.
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Good luck with that.
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I know. Pretty much isn’t happening.
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See this is why I don’t do vacations. If it is not one thing it is another. It’s always something.
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I don’t like to work either. So I am stuck in Dante’s Bitter Inferno.
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You’d fit in perfectly in Hawaii, the Hawaiians are just as bitter! Plus, they do everything at half-speed. They call it “Hawaiian time, brah!”
If you don’t wanna go, I’ll go for you. Just sayin’…
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I think I would fit in with their bitterness too. I plan on going there as often as possible to find out how well.
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