December Just Started and It Feels Half Over: A Friday Chat

NICOLE: Happy Friday! It’s the second of December already! Do you already feel like the month is half over even though it’s just started?

MEGAN: YES. Why!? I think it has something to do with weekends in December being busy weekends because of holiday parties and friends in town and the like. I never have plans on the weekends because that’s how I like it and right now, I have plans all three weekends from now through Christmas. It’s fine! It’s nice to be outside of my apartment, I guess, but this month is gonna zip by.

Does the same thing happen to you?

NICOLE: Well, this month was supposed to be a less intensive month, workwise; I’m finishing up a huge project and after that I’ll have more time to… um… okay I was planning to work on my novel… and then I remember I gotta do the shopping thing and the figuring out investments thing and the party things and the “prepping for taking time off work” thing, which is like more work before you leave work, you know how that goes.

So yes. Short answer yes. Long answer also yes.

MEGAN: Prepping for taking time off work is a terrible, terrible thing. It’s worth it in the end because you have a week or whatever with no work!!! And everyone loves no work! But I remember every time I would take time off when I had staff jobs, I would spend the entire week beforehand like, crying with exhaustion and also stress. It’s almost enough to make me not want to take time off work, which is something a crazy person says.

That’s actually how I felt last weekend, when I had no work for like, four days. Halfway through, I was bored and then I got used to it and then going BACK to work was like a specific kind of torture. I remember thinking to myself, “I should never take off more than a day or two, because if I do, I’ll remember what it’s like not to work and then I’l be sad.”

NICOLE: Lead up to vacation is always so much work! You have to make sure everything’s in place for your clients and jobs, and then you have to make sure everything’s in place for the vacation. Packing, planning your meals so you don’t have food going bad while you’re away but you also have food ready for when you come back (and I know not everyone goes that far in their planning, but I do), making sure you have enough clothes for all of the stuff you’re going to be doing while you’re gone, that kind of thing.

MEGAN: I am so glad that you are a fellow meal planner. Like, I live and die by meal planning because if I don’t have it all sorted at the beginning of the week, I act like grocery stores don’t exist and order takeout for every single meal. I’ve never been able to actually plan to have food ready when I come back, though. That always seems like a good idea, but traveling in New York is Very Bad because it’s such a freaking hassle to get home from the airport. Also, you’re usually emotionally and physically exhausted from, like, baggage claim. Or finding a cab. Or, if you’re particularly masochistic, lugging your shit on the subway when you probably haven’t showered in a minute and are extremely hot.

I love traveling!!!

NICOLE: To be fair, “making sure I have food when I get back” is more like “okay, here is a can of chili that I can eat. Here is a box of Lipton Broccoli and Cheese Noodles.” It’s not great, but I can cook it in under 10 minutes. After I take that absolutely necessary post-travel shower.

Also ugh traveling is so gross. I mean, I love it, I spend money on it, I love seeing people, but planes and buses and even trains sometimes are disgusting.

MEGAN: They sure are! My post-travel meal is usually two pieces of pizza and a fountain Coke from across the street, consumed in front of the TV. Then I unpack everything immediately, because I cannot stand to have boxes/bags/things full of other things in my space. Not sure when that happened, but here we are. Wait — are you going anywhere for the holidays?

NICOLE: Three different places, yo. Mount Vernon, Iowa, followed by a flight to DC on Christmas Day, then off to Los Angeles for New Year’s Eve.

MEGAN: Holy shit. I admire your dedication to seeing people during the worst traveling time of the year. If all goes according to plan, I may just have to get on one very sad train ride Christmas Day to go to my dad’s house and then take the very same sad train back the same night! New Year’s, I have to work both New Year’s Eve AND day, but if I feel fancy, I might go to Vermont with my friends and blog from the ski lodge while they sail down a mountain made of ice.

NICOLE: I am impressed by the image of you hard at work while your friends ski.

MEGAN: Haha, well one of the things I am stupidly snobby about is skiing. I’m not the best skier, but I learned to ski on the West Coast, where the snow is like marshmallows. The last time I skied in Vermont, it was freezing, the snow was basically ice pellets and my ex-boyfriend fell into me while getting onto the lift and the lift hit me on the back of the head, then stopped, and I was put into a backboard and driven down the mountain for no reason other than an abundance of caution.

I was fine. But that’s why I won’t waste money on a lift ticket to ski here!

NICOLE: I have never gone skiing (the whole “grew up in the rural Midwest” thing) and your story has not made me want to do it!

MEGAN: It’s fun and expensive, like most things in life generally are. However, it’s also totally okay to not ski ever. Like, ever. In your life. Be the cool friend drinking a beer in front of a fireplace reading a book. That’s the way to do it.

NICOLE: It’ll all happen in a few weeks, I guess: we’ll be sitting in front of fireplaces (or laptops or televisions or kitchen tables with family) trying to be cool. We can do it! We can do everything we have to do in December and make it through!

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