How to Have Fun on Vacation

A couple of weeks back I came upon 30 fan letters I got five years ago, every one of which I answered at the time but because they were  so nice I decided on the spot to answer them all again, buying special stationery so I could do that in this my one week of vacation at the lake.I also brought with me a waist-high stack of boxes filled with negatives reaching back to the 70s which I have to identify, label, and place in specially bought negative cases - just in case 50 years from now someone wants to make prints from them even though I spent ten solid months in 2008 putting the original pictures that go with these negatives into shiny new albums each duly marked on its spine with the year in gold leaf.Yesterday I wrote here, and filed a column and entered 100 tiny little zip codes and email addresses onto a spread sheet - all in my bathing suit which I donned at 7:00 am thinking to swim right then. Instead I dove off the dock for the first time at 4:00. The swim only lasted about ten minutes because I wanted to begin tackling the books I've been waiting all year to read. They are: “White Like Me” about fighting racism, “Difficult Conversations” about difficult conversations, “Dealing With People You Can’t Stand” about how you really can’t think that way and expect to be a happy person, and “In the Country of Illness” about living with people who are fixin’ to die, and I must say I’m enjoying them all immensely.David meanwhile read his book, fell asleep listening to the ball game, and completed not one but two fiendishly hard crossword puzzles. I feel for the guy to be honest: he doesn’t know how to have fun. Plus, ha ha, he just won’t stay dressed!