Your job doesn't love you

Even before I had a family, I knew I would put family before everything. 

It is why D and I have lived on one salary (his) our entire marriage, and why I squirreled mine away in the almost seven years before we had kids: so that I could be at home and be available to my family.

I haven't always loved or even liked this availability. It is frequently a pain in the neck, and there are many, many mornings when I am glad I am subbing so that I don't have to be around for the getting of the boys on the bus. 

Part of the reason I have not gone back to work full-time is that even though I would love teaching full-time and planning instruction full-time, I would hate the grading papers and the meetings and all the other things that would infringe on my availability to my family beyond full-time. 

A strong work ethic is important, but a job will replace you in a heartbeat. Your family cannot.

If I die, there will be other subs to take jobs and other writers to write pieces. 

My employers will adjust rather quickly.

My family, on the other hand, would not. 

And so this is why my family comes first.

Given this, you can understand why I COMPLETELY LOST MY F*CKING MIND when D told me that he is expected to take his laptop on vacation *just in case.

He hasn't been asked to do that before, and I can assure you that he isn't gonna start.

His work may want to interfere with HIS vacation, but they sure as hell aren't going to interfere with MINE, and since we're a package deal, they can [insert crude sentiment here].

Vacations are sacrosanct for me.

I don't work, and neither will D.

I don't check in.

I don't email people. 

I barely check social media.

Vacations are for experiencing and living in the moment, for living deeply and sucking the marrow out of life. 

His employer has known about this vacation since January, so they have had plenty of time to plan or adjust or whatever they need to do to deal with D's absence.

And if he is so blanged important to the functioning of the company, they need to pay him a hell of a lot more.

I told him to tell them that he is a doing a trial run that week for when he dies.