VMOL

There are 2 posts tagged VMOL.

How I fucked up Virgo Month of Leisure this year

My house, a blue two-story dumb house with a shiny new green roof
After a difficult May when I endured a whole bunch of house maladies that just broke me, I decided to finally invest in a new roof. My old one was slate, not really well-maintained. These are roofs which “last 100 years!” as so many people told me but mine was at least 120 and not looking great. More to the point, slate roofs are “old technology” and it’s harder and harder to find people to work on them. After calling, no shit, fifteen different people to get a leak fixed, I made a choice to move on.

I got some bids in May, signed a contract in June and after a few reasonable delays (my foreman got kidney stones!) the massive dumpster was delivered August 28th and the crew got to work on September 2nd. I went to Massachusetts to Kate’s for the duration because the crew nominally started at 7 am and I preferably start at 10 am. All of this to say that I forgot that the Virgo Month of Leisure was even a thing until today. Ha!

I had a nice time at Kate’s, and a very nice birthday on Friday. Drove home on Saturday with a blinking D light on my dashboard and a very sketchy-feeling transmission (when it rains it pours, also it was pouring!) and when I spotted the Hartford Green roof as I drove up the road to my house I nearly gasped. It’s lovely and so solid-seeming. And while it’s true that it makes the rest of my house look a little more shabby by comparison, I am fine with it. Today, I can relax. Tomorrow, maybe not so much.

The Virgo Month of Leisure is my own personal holiday to remind myself to take a freaking break once in a while. These annual blog posts always seem to be morning-after-quarterbackingly explaining why I need it. Yes, a whole month.

ETA: the car thing, based on diagnostic codes, shouldn’t be a disaster. I know for some people “Oh no car troubles!” can be a bigger deal so I wanted to clarify.

Extra “bad” Virgo Month of Leisure

a bunch of people clowning for the camera.

So Run DMC has that catchy song where they say “Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good” and that’s how I feel about forgetting about the Virgo Month of Leisure. I mean it’s sort of a joke already. I have to have a vacation from my life, an entire month, because I am high strung and don’t know how to relax. So forgetting the fake holiday because I was (maybe) busy relaxing? Joke writes itself.

But! This year I’ve been getting better at it. I meditate now (I will only talk about it if you ask) and do yoga when I am in Vermont. I went on nearly three weeks of actual vacation this summer and as a result, forgot about the Virgo Month of Leisure entirely until a few days ago. And then I went back through the old MoL posts to see if I’d been keeping up with them and no I had not. Last year I had a weird shoulder problem and so wasn’t posting much. I’m not even sure what I was doing the year before. In 2013 I did a 15 year wrap-up so I’m pretty plugged in from before that.

This past weekend was both Childnado IV (pictured) AND my birthday on consecutive days. I haven’t even gotten my photos from London uploaded yet but I can just word-picture it for you and tell you it was a good time. And London was a good time. And I miss being home in Vermont but I feel like I really summered it up this time, in every good way. This week is about putting things away and loading up my car and eating all the leftovers and getting ready to teach people how to use computers and becoming reacquainted with smaller towns and emptier roads and woodsier yards and colder weather. Totally ready for it.

For people who are interested in my librarianing, I’ve got a librarian newsletter which I send out more or less weekly, just 500-800 words about library topics. Feel free to click over to see the archives or subscribe if it’s the sort of thing you think you’d like.