Can we find a better word than 'staycation,' please?

I've never been that crazy about portmanteau words, and out of all of them, 'staycation' is one of the most annoying. I mean, for most people, if you are not at work, aren't you on vacation?

I took a week and half of vacation, but stayed in town. Current family finances are tight, so it seemed better to stay home than to make thing more stressful by adding travel expenses to the equation. Instead we hosted some of our kids over the Independence Day holiday/weekend, and then I spent a week doing nothing much really.

I don't feel the least bit sorry for myself. It was the first time since I was in junior high, when I was too old to be babysat and too young to have a job, that I had something like those long and lazy summer vacation days. I got caught up on my sleep and my laundry. I picked berries and made pies. I walked at the local botanical center, and around my neighborhood, and at parks.

It is high summer on the prairie. It's one of the most beautiful things about living in Iowa.

I also worked in my own garden. We expanded the front yard perennial beds a bit, and I spent a day transplanting hostas, mulching, adding pavers and river rock, and building a very short retaining wall.  That deck you see in the background in the photo below is on the short list for next projects around here, but we'll wait until at least fall to start. 

Together, Tom and I cooked up an idea for a discarded floor lamp he found. It's out in the backyard right now, scaring the bunnies and amusing the neighbors. It's intended to be yard art, but it's not quite done yet. I'll write more about it later when we've arrived at its final state. It's still in the middle of the creative process. And there tends to be a lot of middle to my creative processes. Messy middles. We'll see what happens. 

One of the fortunate things about my job is a very generous vacation policy, but for the most part I haven't always taken advantage of that. When I do, it's because family is visiting for the holidays, or we're leaving town for a destination trip of some sort or another. What vacation time I do take, I tend to spend on engagement. 

Engagement is great. It's how you meet new people, discover new places and experiences, embrace the breadth and depth of your relationships both local and distant. I love that part of vacation. 

This, however, was a vacation of disengagement. I stayed home. I slept in. I read books and let my bare feet get dirty in the vegetable garden and I didn't always comb my hair. I took walks alone. I thought about people in my life, some of them pretty hard, and I wrote some, too. 

All of this was deeply calming in a way I didn't expect, but suspect I deeply needed. Vacation so often implies the expectation of a strong "woo-hoo!" factor, knocking things off the bucket list, fulfilling a dream itinerary in a dream location, seizing that day or weekend or week and stuffing every last bit you can into it. 

Instead, this vacation seemed more like an act of self-care, of stepping off to the side of life for a bit to let my own thoughts bubble up to the surface. I'm surprised how long and calm and beautiful the vacation seemed, and yet I have very little to report from the experience. No woo-hoo, anyway. Maybe more along the lines of a-ha. We'll see what comes out of that messy creative middle, as well. 

I still don't have any better word to replace the annoying "staycation." I just know I'd enjoy more of them, more often.