vacation?

Well, it doesn't yet quite feel like summer break. I spent last week and the week before thrashing out that essay whose progress I alluded to so cryptically in the last few posts. I finished a draft – what feels like a good draft – and have set it aside for a while. This week was to be devoted to a book review. I've done half the work, I guess: I read the book, and even made some notes.

We're leaving for summer travels this Saturday: a couple of weeks divided between Fire Island and NYC, then a jaunt to Paris and Switzerland. It'll be my first time ever in Paris – blush – and the first time in Switzerland since 2000. I'm looking forward to travelling, I guess. As I realize more and more as I grow older, I've inherited all of my mother's worry-genes.

Anyway, what was meant to be a week of casual preparations, with the the girls in their respective camps (D in ballet camp, P in drama camp) turned nasty Sunday night when I blundered into the closet to check on whether or not I had a windbreaker for the trip. The light had burned out, so I started pawing through the jackets hanging on my side of the closet in the dark, seizing a likely candidate; its hanger hung on the crappy wire-frame closet insert (you know the kind), and when I tugged it loose, the entire insert came down, with approximately 250 lbs. of clothes of various shapes, sizes and vintages.

All of today has been devoted to repair work: a whole new set of supports and hooks and binders and other doodads to hang this bad boy back in place, and make sure it doesn't come down again. The best part of the whole thing has been the necessity of actually going thru my wardrobe, piece by piece, as I hung things back up. I estimate I'm throwing out about 30% of the total – things I don't wear anymore, things I don't fit anymore, things I've been hanging onto out of sheer sentimentality. (I have my dad's old Army field jacket, with "Scroggins" on the front and all of his unit insignia; I don't need a collection of khaki shirts with epaulettes, or a windbreaker – damn that windbreaker!)

Tomorrow is a trip to the Goodwill.