Don't ask about mustard!

Flashback to 1981 The Reagan administration calls for cuts in the school lunch program, prompting the USDA to allow ketchup to be counted as a vegetable.

Flashback even further to those fiendish SAT analogy questions that went:
X is to Y as
(a)Z is to Q
(b)C is to D
(c)Q is to M
or
(d)K is to J?

Well, I propose to you that Catch-up is to Vacation as Ketchup is to Vegetable.

I have a week off. That is not the same thing as a vacation. I have so many things to catch up on, and tasks I have just postponed until this week. During summer classes my schedule doesn't allow for doctor appointments, comparison shopping of colleges for my youngest, deep-cleaning, major financial considerations, rejuvenating treatments for chlorine-damaged hair, chatty phone calls or long-overdue letter-writing. Most evenings by the time I get home from doing my dancing art fairy routine and buying groceries, I am pretty tired and brain numb. Big jobs like watering houseplants, feeding the aquarium fish, and toasting a bagel take the rest of my energy. So, I set even greater challenges aside...

And now, VOILA! It is Catch-Up Week! I don't want to catch up. I want to lay around reading fluffy fiction, or sunbathe on a pool float. I want bronzed natives to bring me cold beer, although, in the interests of health, I am willing for it to be Lite beer. I think other bronzed natives should vacuum the condo, do the ironing, and balance the checkbook so I can just drift off into my island fantasy. Maybe I will ponder what books and music I would like to have with me on my desert isle...

Today's Vocabulary Question
If I clean up something disgusting, have I de-disgusted it? We are talking about teen boys here. Is de-disgusting a double negative? Have I actually gusted? Or maybe even regusted? And who was this Gus anyway, and why can't he ever clean up after himself???

A Cautionary Tale

In the mid-Seventies I worked in a hospital kitchen and wore a white uniform. In the summer I either worked the six a.m. to 2:30 p.m. shift, or went to work from 3:45 to 7:30. Once, after a leisurely morning and sunbathing all afternoon in my bright blue bikini, I had to go to work at 3:45. I needed to iron a uniform. The ironing board was in the basement, and it was comparatively dark down there after sunbathing. Somehow I managed to iron my stomach. The burn was about four inches long, and right where all my bell-bottom hip-hugger waistbands hit. It took weeks to heal. Please be careful when reality intrudes on your island fantasies, especially where small appliances are concerned.

Now put the lime in the coconut and shake it all up!