Forty-seven points

My annual Christmas break is possibly my most favorite time of the year. It's the three (or four, depending on how Christmas falls, and how much time off the Board of Regents needs that year) when I feel truly free. Whenever I'm faced with three months of nothing, which happens every year in the first week of May, my OCD/overachiever neurosis will kick in, and I start saying things like, "Why don't I renovate the bonus room? I have so much time off!", or "Geez, three months is way too long to just sit around, I think I'll volunteer for a six-week study abroad to China." The bottom line is that free time just scares me to death.

So Christmas break, with its three (or four) weeks off, is much easier for ants-in-their-pants people like me to handle. It's too short to tackle any major projects, a feat aided by the fact that several days are "lost" to things like Christmas and New Year's (and so the painting of the quarter rounds will have to wait until summer), and too long to stay stuck in the work flow, which often happens during Spring Break. During that one week in March, I need to literally leave the country if I want to relax, because if I don't, I will end up writing conference papers and prepping classes, because "When I get back to work, do you know how much stuff I have to do?". In short, like Goldilocks' porridge, Christmas break is perfect.

Now the purpose of this lengthy introduction about the awesomeness that is Christmas break was to lead into a brief kvetch-fest about the 47-or-so-points to-do list that somehow popped into existence when my mind woke up from its finals-grading-induced haze, and realized, hey! We're going on a trip! And so we should really take care of all those things that have been left unfinished for the past months! Things like hemming that skirt, taking out the dry cleaning, dusting the light fixtures, getting pictures developed, upgrading various iDevices, and on and on and on. This means that after spending an hour each morning reveling in the fact that it's Christmas break, and I get to sit on the couch, sip my tea and watch CBS This Morning while around me the Christmas lights are twinkling, I turn to my multi-day, multi-page to-do list, and get to work. There are trips to CVS, to Kroger, to the BX, the base pool and/or gym, the bank, the tire rotation place, the dollar store, and back to CVS because the commissary doesn't carry Excedrin anymore.

This to-do list thing isn't a first either. Lately, whenever we travel anywhere, there are to-do lists days in advance. I remember when we used to just pack up the night before, double check if the stove was off and the door was locked, and leave. Now, leaving the house has turned into a near-military operation. There are checklists, pack lists, assigned responsibilities (you call the kennel to verify the dogs' shot records are in order, and I will get the oil in the car changed), reminder, and occasional pow-wows about who-what-where. In all fairness to us, though, we will be traveling on different days, almost a week apart, so some communication is necessary unless we want to get the tires rotated twice. But still. Sometimes I wonder how all those people who book last minute flights to exotic, faraway places do it and manage to enjoy their trip. I mean, with my luck, and lack of lists, I'd forget my bathing suit, or my ski suit, or something equally relevant to said last-minute adventure. And I'd spend the entire vacation worrying about whether the dogs' shots were up to date, and we'd remembered to turn the alarm on.

So yeah, last minute trips don't work for us. And we're probably slight over-organized. But heck, if you need help invading a small country or dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster, we're your men! And woman, of course.