Can It Be A Vacation Without Chevy Chase?

This is not my topless neighbor or the UPS chick.

        So I’ve been between jobs for the last couple of weeks, which is to say I’ve been sitting at home in my underwear, growing a beard and eating cereal three times a day for the last couple of weeks. Incidentally, since I despise laundry, its been the same pair of underwear for about 14 days now but I did turn them inside out after the first week to keep them fresh. I kind of feel like I’m on Survivor without the bad-ass teal bandanna “buff”. I’m not sure if I’m a villain or a hero yet but I formed a strong alliance with the pizza delivery guy, the UPS chick and my retired neighbor/crossing guard, who in true Survivor fashion doesn’t wear a shirt nine months out of the year. I’ve named our tribe Nosferatu because I’ve fallen into the classic vacation pattern of sleeping all day and staying up all night hunting for boobs on Cinemax. I planned ahead and bought enough milk and Fruity Pebbles to hold out for the duration and using the same bowl and plastic spoons saves me from doing dishes. It seems my laziness is highly motivated. There’s no need to start sending me donations via Paypal to ensure I can continue brightening your dreary lives every week. I have something lined up and I’m starting my new gig on Monday, the day this blog hits the press, and I thought this might be an appropriate time to share what I’ve learned from my time on unemployment Redemption Island.

I thought "Dutch" was a good movie.

        I’d like my staycation shockumentary to be a cautionary tale for all the teenagers out there who are trying to get pregnant so they can be on MTV’s newest craptacular show about transgender amputee high school students from Bumblefuck, Arkansas who are pregnant and cooking meth in their double wide trailers. Don’t do it! Kids are hard work and there is no way you can prepare for the rigors of graduating from Sweet Valley High, maintaining your 2.0 GPA and training to be a pixie dust spreader on the tilt-a-whirl, while taking care of an infant. While I was working a full time job I did the typical evening and weekend super Dad stuff; sweep in at the end of the day for bath time and bed time, order pizza for dinner, stick my hand down the front of my pants in true “No Ma’am” style, watch some TV and call it a day. Being home 7 days a week has given me a fresh perspective on what it means to be a parent and what it takes to care for a child full-time. My hats off to my wife, my mother and all the other parents out there. Abstinence is the best policy, but if you accidentally slip one past the goalie, consider yourself warned.

        I’m fairly certain that 85% of all work that is done in the universe occurs before McDonald’s is done selling breakfast. This isn’t strictly a vacation related phenomenon, but the severity of the problem is amplified when you’re sleeping until 10:00 everyday. Every time I have a week or more off from work I tell myself I’ll drag my ass out of bed by 8:00 and try to maintain a normal schedule. By the second day I’m staying up until 2:00 and sleeping until 10:00. I’m rolling out of bed with maybe an hours worth of usable, productive time to spend. Assuming no occurrences of rectal tenesmus, I’m ready to roll in about 15 minutes, leaving me with a solid 45 minutes to get shit done per day, giving me a grand total of 450 minutes per two week vacation. Frankly, I’m downright astonished with the amount of things I’ve managed to take care of with such a brief amount of time available. After crunching the numbers on it, I can understand the shocked looks on my wife’s face when she comes home from work to see what I’ve managed to accomplish with a mere 45 minutes of labor a day. On behalf of men everywhere with growing honey-do lists to accompany their growing prostates, to the wives of said men, with shrinking patience and shrinking understanding, you’re welcome for all the hard work. We hope you appreciate it.