The Boomer Takes A Stay-cation

My dear friend Shelley Brown, ever the wit and also the inspiration for this series, has started calling me the Boomur. I kinda like it although it’s maybe a little to specific for these posts. But it's always good to have a nickname.

There was a time when the Boomer lived an orderly life. When he was gainfully enslaved by the corporate huckster  industry and there always seemed to be some sort of competition to getting the last two weeks in July for your holidays.
Back before the climate went to hell, these weeks could always be counted on to produce more days of sunshine and summer warmth than any other two weeks of the season.
The Boomer personally didn’t care for holidays, except for the time it afforded him to be with his family. He wasn’t what you would have called a ‘hands on’ father. This had a lot to do with the fact that his wife was an all-pro mom. It was all she ever really wanted to be. And so the Boomer made sure that was the case. Through his job and by taking on a lot of freelance work on top of it.
It was actually a win-win. Because the Boomer got to be as obsessive about his work as he needed to be to make sure it was good stuff. And his wife got to be a full time mom for pretty much all of their kids’ childhood and adolescence.
In retrospect, the Boomer feels he definitely got the better deal. Because as a writer he was trained to be observant, and what he observed was that sitting around coming up with advertising ideas and writing copy was a walk in the park compared to being a mom, which really, if it is done right, is a 24/7 thing.
But early on, before peer pressure and teenage angst set in with his kids, there were holidays, in true Canadian style…at the cottage.
The Boomer and his brood would pack up the car early on a Saturday morning and head out east and then north to an area known as the Kawarthas. Sometimes the Boomer even got to drive, although his wife never really trusted him behind the wheel, and still does not to this day.
The Kawartha Lakes were a cluster of pristine fresh water lakes up in an area called the Haliburton Highlands. They had names like Mississauga Lake, Anstruther Lake, Lake Kashagawigamog, Long Lake, and Stoney Lake.
For the first few years they would rent private cottages, which the Boomer liked because his kids’ need for social interaction was minimal. They both loved the water and worked hard to tire themselves out by 8:00.

As the kids grew older, the Boomer’s wife, (all-pro mom), suggested a resort called Willow Beach Cottages, which was very close to the town of Haliburton. The Boomer’s wife, who was so all-pro that she even had time for several hobbies was, and still is, among other things, a miniaturists, used these  Willow Beach holidays to take daytime miniaturist artisan courses at the Haliburton School of Fine Arts.
So the vacations became a win win for her as well. Two weeks of not having the kids as her primary responsibility for at least part of the day. And the Boomer actually got to bond with his kids when they weren’t engaged in some sort of resort sponsored activities.
Too soon, the Boomer laments, the kids outgrew Willow Beach and the whole idea of a vacation with their parents. So vacations morphed into stay-cations with with side trips to Niagara Falls, Canada’s Wonderland the Canadian National Exhibition and various beaches along the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
The Boomer wonders if all families went through the same vacation patterns as their kids grew. But he didn't wonder about it hard enough to ever ask anyone.
Over the past several years, now that his kids are both married and doing their own things, the Boomer cannot recall actually ever having a scheduled vacation. This is because the ‘hurry up and wait’ nature of his business created natural gaps which he fills with vacation-like activities, like gooding off and trips to upstate New York, while they were still allowing Canadians into the country.
In point of fact, in a conversation he had with his wife on their seeming endless series of back and forth trips between Toronto and St Catharines prior to moving there, his wife pointed out that the whole idea behind buying a house with a pool was that if they had one they would not need go to a cottage for their vacations. They could simply go out the back door.
As the Boomer sits here, in the shade of his gazebo, (pictured above) writing this piece, sufficiently cooled down from a dip in the pool, he takes a moment to congratulate himself on marrying such a smart woman.* It would very much seem, at least to the Boomer, that the entire summer season is now one grand stay-cation, just like she promised.

This is Boomer Post #2. Other posts in this series can be read at https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray

*The Boomer is aware of how sexist that sounds, by the way, so there will be no need to make any snide comments about it. :)

Jim Murray is a communication strategist, writer, art director, blogger and beBee brand ambassador for Canada. His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, headquartered in St Catharines, Ontario and designed to serve forward thinking businesses in the Niagara and Golden Horseshoe regions of Southern Ontario. You can find out more about us at: www.bulletproofconsulting.ca

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