Planning your summer vacation? Join the rat race
By Beth Teitell
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Summer’s not even here yet, and already it’s ruined, since it looks like I won’t be going anywhere, at least not anywhere decent. Or so I’ve been told.
‘‘Don’t tell me you haven’t made reservations yet,” one of my friends said yesterday when I innocently - or so I thought - brought up the subject of vacation. ‘‘It’s already too late if you want to get anything with even the remotest view,” she added. ‘‘You’re better off thinking summer ’07. I’m sure you’ll be able to get something with a window for then.”
What was she talking about? Surely a beach-or-near-enough-to-it rental can still be had. Then I got it: I was already too late for the In Spot of Summer ’06. What’s worse, I didn’t know where it was.
The Hamptons? Done, I think. Is Diddy still planning a July 4 party? Nantucket - over, or not? Everybody goes to the Vineyard, so should that still include me?
Outside, it was a beautiful day, but I couldn’t enjoy it. How could I, knowing that I’d be stuck here all summer. True, ‘‘here” is actually a very nice place, but if there’s one downside to summer, it’s the pressure to make the most of it, to decamp at a place with high-octane chic.
And if you miss the boat (real or metaphorical), you might as well stay in town and pretend to be a workaholic.
As I recall from summers past, you can have a perfectly nice time of things right here in Boston, drinking iced coffee, enjoying the Harbor Islands, making a day trip or two to the Cape, barbecuing, dining outside on balmy evenings. If only that were enough. No, there’s always a showoff in the office, who whips out a picture of a beachfront cottage with a deck and a perfectly rundown fence (‘‘yes, we let Martha shoot it for her June cover”), and paints a picture of two weeks of flip-flops and sand and soft-serve ice cream and trashy novels and marital bliss, and even though you’d been feeling a bit summery yourself, wearing sandals and taking the scenic route to work, all of a sudden you start to get that tight feeling in your neck and shoulders.
In fact, sometimes it’s vacation envy more than work pressures or the relentlessness of life’s obligations at home that make you feel that you’ve got to get away. If only out of pride. ‘‘I don’t really like traveling that much,” a woman I know confided recently, ‘‘but I feel I need to for my reputation.”
So listen up, people: Your fabulous vacation plans? Your inside tip on the newest, hippest resort? Your blissful beach bungalow that just happens to have Bill and Hill and Nicole and Keith as neighbors? Keep it to yourself, please.
Unless the roof caves in. Then I want to hear all about it.
