10 Simple Things I did on my Staycation

COVID is exhausting and early on, I knew I would not make it without time out. As well, I wanted others to know it was OK to say “hey, I just want to not work for a few days.”  

So I’m taking breaks every three or four months. I’ve just completed my fifth staycation since the beginning of the pandemic. I’ve tried to find meaning in each of my breaks. Here are the highlights of the recent one: 

10. I culled my bed and bath linens and clothes and took four garbage bags full to a women’s shelter. I’ve been collecting linens (especially) for 25 years. Towels do not wear out, and I was grateful to find a place where they can be put to use. While donating, I fantasized about further significant downsizing and living more simply, thinking “do we spend the first half of our lives accumulating stuff and the second half getting rid of it?” 

9. I went 90 minutes west to Woodstock to visit my 93 year old mother for the first time in a year. We masked up and drove to my father’s grave where we weeded the sedums. We then drove on to visit my mom’s favourite pet chickens at the home of my niece and her wife. Enroute, we marvelled at the height of the corn and questioned whether some of it might be sorghum, just a farmer’s wife talking to a farmer’s daughter. 

8. I attended live theatre in a local park put on by Shakespeare in Action, an anchor tenant at the Artscape Weston Common. The production wove The Tempest with the story of Hurricane Hazel (which destroyed part of Weston back in 1954), and the pandemic in a creative and compelling way. It’s the first live theatre I’ve seen in 18 months: a salve for the wound that is COVID.  

7. I hosted two smart, funny, insightful women for dinner in my gazebo during an extraordinary rainstorm. Our conversation was so engaging we barely noticed the pounding of the water on the roof and the clapping thunder. A treat! 

6. I walked down the banks of the Humber River from Bloor to the lake and back with a good friend, a stretch I had not traveled before. We sat in red Muskoka chairs overlooking the lake with conversation weaving between the minutiae of our lives and some heavier stuff, as only the best of friends can. 

5. I explored a corner of Toronto with another of my closest friends , a first for us, despite him moving to Toronto at the beginning of the pandemic. COVID anxiety prevented me from being out and about with him before. We laughed and carried on like the school kids we once were as we discovered places like The Cheese Boutique and Hot Black Coffee, knowing we’d return. 

4. I purchased loppers with telescopic handles and a ratcheting mechanism allowing me to prune my hedges and my smoke bush without asking for help, to my enormous satisfaction. And I learned loppers are often called Cyndi. 

3. I went to the airshow on a brilliant sunny Sunday afternoon. I oohed and aaaahed over the Snowbirds’ aerobatics while acknowledging within me the tension between the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the need to have fun. I know the airshow is an anachronism.

2. I supported a good friend through the sudden illness of a parent as she grappled with issues of life, death, and grief, issues that are just way too present in our lives as we age. 

1. I completed my 2000 km 2021 walking goal to raise money for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation, culminating in a 20 km walk in honour of my husband, Jack, who was treated at the hospital and died of cancer nearly three years ago.  

And I read, and I cooked, and I gardened, and I painted, and I ate, and I wrote, and I slept, and I hung out with my dogs, and and and… 

If you haven’t figured the art of the simple vacation at home, I encourage you to submit to it. If you have, well, carry on!