What I Didn’t Do on My Summer Vacation by Ash Krafton
I know I told Red I’d stop by and tell her about my summer vacation. We’re both writing moms so it’s always fun to compare notes. That way we can be consumed with envy and beat ourselves up for not pushing ourselves harder.
(Don’t be fooled by the supporting mommy blogs or those goofy commercials. This is what moms really do. Whenever we say “Oh, sorry I haven’t seen you in a while…been so busy with the kids” we really mean “I haven’t slept through the night in four-and-a-half months. I don’t need a downer.”)
However, when I sat down at the keyboard, I saw my to-do list on my desk and realized that I am still stuck somewhere back in June. Aw, crap.
Where did the time go?
Cue the Phineas and Ferb theme song: “One hundred and four days of summer vacation, ‘til school comes along just to end it…” I should be able to get loads done in that amount of time, right?
Silly rabbits, summer vacations are for kids.
My summer vacations were over when I turned fourteen. That’s the year I got my first job, a three year stint of servitude at the local farm dairy. I worked in the shop as an ice cream dipper.
Just kidding. We milked cows, not goats. (Art by L. Andrews)
Sounds cute and fluffy, doesn’t it? Mounds of colorful ice cream with sprinkles and unicorns and NO. It wasn’t anything like that. During the summer, I worked until eleven each night, mass-producing CMP sundaes and ridiculously complex banana splits for the enraged mobs of city folk who couldn’t understand why we didn’t have a take-a-number system. I lugged frozen tubs of the Great Icy Evil and hand-made whipped cream in the double-barrel Canisters of Vanilla Death, wondering if the next hit of the air compressor would skewer me with shrapnel. Twenty five years later, I can’t order a chocolate milkshake without wondering if the girl behind the counter needs a hug or a liniment rub.
Pfft. Summer vacations. Right.
By the time I was sixteen and getting ready to drive, summertime became a desperate attempt to work as much as possible before school started again. By then, I was employed by a large chain drug store, finally free of my crack-brained slave driver of a dairy mistress. No more falling asleep covered in sticky globs of frozen terror for me, no sir. However, the job wasn’t as idyllic as it could have been because I had a new monster to worry about: Customer Service.
Customer Service makes the B-movie monsters look like a stoned Pomeranian. It rears its ugly head every time a customer utters the words “the customer is always right” at which point they become a possessed demon who needs ritualistic slaying taming with spells of ass-kissing pacification.
Sigh. What I endured for gas money.
When college started, summers disappeared altogether–they just became the “sweaty semester” as I took summer classes and worked full-time in between. I lived in West Philadelphia at the time and my wages were split between rent, cheesesteaks, and trolley money. It was then I learned that I had no shame and really would do just about anything for money, including mopping laboratory floors with bleach because someone worked with contagion-crawling blood.
Don’t worry. I wore gloves. Universal precautions, people. Universal precautions.
College work kind of melted into post-grad work and before I know it, I’m forty years old and trying to write a guest post on my summer vacation.
Hmm.
Thinking.
Ooh! I know!
“How I Spent My Summer Vacation…
"I watched my kids complain their summer vacation isn’t long enough…and laughed my behind off because those poor kids have NO IDEA what lies in store for them.
"One day, the Future will rear its ugly head and a Job will descend upon them, the unsuspecting darlings, and their days of lying around on couches staring at screens and emptying my refrigerator will come to a swift and painful end.
"Muhahahahahahahahahahahaha.”
Yeah. That pretty much sounds right.
Happy Last Days of Summer Vacation, everyone. Because it will end.
Oh, yes. It will end.
Muhahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Ash Krafton is the author of the Books of the Demimonde. I’m reading Bleeding Hearts right now and loving it! Ash just released a short story collection on Smashwords, as well as joined me & Claudia Lefeve in my free Wizard download. If you enjoyed her summer vacay post above, I think you’ll love her mad scientist story. I sure did.
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