Liberty Leave

I work for an organization that is born and bred of the military. That's a little weird for me, being that Marigold was many years ago a service man in the military. And he hated it. Every minute of it. He did his four years then politly excluded himself, thankful for the experiences, but in no way interested in signing on for any more time. He even refused to sign up for reserve duty, for fear of being called back to duty. When I say he was DONE, he was done!

To thank me for a job well done on a recent project, I was awarded with four hours of liberty leave. How cool is that? I was pretty stoked about the gift. Cash would've been great, but liberty leave is exceptionally awesome to me.


As a result of my experiences being a Mommy to my flowers, I have learned to be extremely conservative when it comes to taking/using leave. One never knows when the next episode of strep throat, pink eye (see my post from ), the flu, a bad cold, or any combination of those nasty bugs can require a child to stay home for a day, two, three, a week even (!), and at 8 hours a pop, those hours can be depleted pretty quickly. Marigold and I have a pretty good buddy system set up, in that he'll normally take a day or leave early or come in late to off-set my schedule when I have a major situation at work that I can't possibly leave my job for, so I'm most grateful for his flexibility.

But even still, kids are kids, and they tend to share everything - including the nasty germs you'd rather they keep to themselves. One has to be prepared for the worst possible case scenario. Having ample leave on hand is only a small part of that preparation. I told Marigold recently that I will not allow myself to take a whole week's vacation until I have accrued 200 hours of leave. I'm tipping the scales right now at just over 100 hours. I guess I'm a tightwad when it comes to my leave.

Four hours of liberty leave! I'm so tickled to have it. Can't wait to use it. Perhaps I'll save it for the next catastrophe that comes my way instead of splurging on say - a massage/manicure/pedicure spa adventure.