Ready for Summer

I know, we only started having spring weather and I'm already rushing through to the next season.

But today I learned that I was wrong about our vacation policy. I do not have to wait until my 3rd anniversary at the company to receive an additional week of time off. No, I will start earning this extra time off at the start of my third year here, which is in June. I've rejoined the land of the living and will have more than 2 weeks of vacation this year, and a little over 3 next year. Thank goodness. It was hard saving up all my time off last year for our wedding, and I was lucky that I gained a few extra days when I worked weekends at various book fairs. Now there will be no more scrounging around for time so that I'm not the only person working during the holidays or because I couldn't take a long weekend around the 4th of July. Now I can use a vacation day here and there and not feel like I'm going to be screwed come the fall, that I have months to go before we refresh our time off.

We're well on our way to preparing for our summer vacation. It'll have been one year ago come July that we enjoyed Italy and all its glory. I feel like I've traveled so much since I started this job. And mostly it has been international time away. Although exciting, the trips can be draining--time differences and long layovers, the pressure to see this and that or we'll regret it, figuring out what to say in a foreign language, and of course, the expensiveness that comes along with it all.

This summer we celebrate our first wedding anniversary in Maine, a state which I've been to for a mere few hours for college, for marching band. I saw some snow, a football field, and rowdy bus full of college kids wondering why we're doing this when we could be sleeping in on a Saturday morning after heavy drinking. The thing is, we'll stay at a charming inn in Camden and from there do all sorts of day stuff--exploring--hanging out--relaxing. We'll toast a year down and so many to go. And that makes me happy. We'll also camp. We haven't been since we got engaged, although Bub has with his friends. We've had some good times backpacking in Montana, cooking by the fire, swimming, hiking, broiling in our tent at the Florida Keys, trying to use our cell phones to call friends and family to tell them that we're engaged... I'm looking forward to reminiscing and, of course, spending some time away.

For now, I have several trips to New York for work, a friend's wedding, and our first trek to the Cape this season to look forward to.

I'm ready for summer.