Gimme a Break!

My two-week vacation experiment is fast approaching, and it's been more of a challenge than I thought.  My plan was to block out two weeks of July and not schedule anything during those two weeks.  Not easy.  Right off the bat, I lost half of my July violin lesson and shop income.  I was tempted to just teach a little bit, but I knew the floodgates would open if I wrote those lesson times on my calendar.  It has also been hard to cancel my kids' music lessons.  We have wonderful teachers who depend on the income from lessons.  I'm not thrilled about paying for lessons we won't have, but I can't, in good conscience, not pay when we're taking up a lesson spot.

When I tell people we're on vacation but we're not going anywhere, they're confused. It almost seem socially unacceptable to be "on vacation" if you're going to be in town.  And how far do we go with it?  Golda has responsibilities at Young Women's.  We have church.  There are some social things, like a wedding and a ward party, park days, neighborhood classes.  A friend of mine wanted to do a BBQ.  I didn't know whether to say, "We can't.  We plan to be sitting at home doing nothing that day.  It's a little goal we have."  Then there's housekeeping and meals.  I guess I can't get out of those.  My plan was to not have any practicing to do, but one teacher said, "I'll have to give you plenty to work on during your break."  So what is it in our culture that makes taking a break seem so lazy and inappropriate?  I'm almost ready to give up on the idea of time off because it's so hard to explain.  But I want to stick to my guns just to see what if feels like when that Monday morning rolls around and we have nowhere to be and nothing to do.  I have a feeling I'm going to hate it, but I'm prepared to buckle down and work at it until I perfect the art of doing nothing!  We might be so bored, we'll go on a road trip.  That way, at least there would be an explanation for our laziness!