Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Personal day!

I am a firm believer in taking advantage of the two personal days a year that are my "right". Some of my colleagues pride themselves on never missing a day of work, but I believe that the school where we work gives us personal days, mental health days and sick days for a reason - to be used. That said, I don't abuse sick days, and, knock on wood, I tend to be a fairly robust human being, so I never use up all of my sick days. In fact, at this point, they've probably accrued so that I could miss an entire month, if need by (fingers crossed that it won't happen!).
But personal days are different. They are guilt-free days that I happily take off. I normally use them for a random long weekend, but it felt GREAT to take this past Friday off. I had been feeling a bit sick, but a cold did not fully develop, so it seemed unethical to take a sick day. A personal day, however, was a totally different matter.
So, I put in the request on Wednesday night, got the okay, planned classes and on Thursday afternoon, I blissfully closed and locked the office, walking away from school for the weekend.
I must confess that I intended the personal day to also be a work day - the stacks of papers had piled up enough. Buuuttttt... It wasn't to be. I decided that the personal day would be truly personal. I enjoyed a leisurely walk with the dogs in the morning, then I went for a nice, slow, hilly run around mid-morning, followed up by an INTENSE massage. I rarely splurge on a massage, but someone recommended this cheap but clean place, so I've gone there twice. The deep-tissue experience was definitely intense but therapeutic. By the time early evening rolled around, I had baked this bread and made dinner, which was butternut squash raviolis with a sage and cream sauce. We washed dinner down with a Byron Pinot Noir. It was a far better bottle than we usually drink, but I think the massage and shopping left me feeling quite magnanimous.
Oh, yeah, did I mention that I went shopping?
I found this little number which I ended up wearing to the holiday party on Sunday night:

















It was a fun dress to wear to a holiday party. Usually I stick to the comfort and familiarity of the LBD (I have one that is silk and another that is wool, so I can pretty much work them all year-long, if need be), but I loved the print and also the cut of this dress.
All in all, a successful personal day!

1 comment:

Kim said...

I LOVE that dress. Where did you get it?
Aren't massages GREAT? I love them and need to schedule one soon.
I'm glad you took a personal day. I have almost all my sick days and the year is coming to an end! Ahh! Work is too busy for me to take time off, unfortunately. I'll make up for it next year ;)