I get three weeks paid vacation a year. Leslie gets eleven paid holidays and I get six so she has a lot of free time that I don't get to share with he.... It hasn't been a major problem because of two simple facts: I can't stand her family (neither can she most of the time) and they live four hundred miles away. Leslie usually takes three weeks off during the summer and goes back to visit them and she always tells them I couldn't come because I don't have enough seniority to bid for summer. By the time Betty surfaced, we'd eaten and Sally had done the little bit of homework she'd brought home. She was sitting on my lap and reading the simple book from the school library. Betty came into the lounge with a weary smile on her face as she saw her daughter, with a book, on my lap. Sally caught the movement and looked up, saw her mother and jumped down to run to her."I've been reading to Daddy!"Betty looked at me with raised eyebrows and I shrugged. "I said she could call me that when. "No problem-o." She opened a cabinet, revealing bottles and glasses. She bent and wrote something on a notepad, then turned to explain: "I rented the place furnished, including the booze. When they come back from their round-the-world cruise, I want to have everything exactly as they left it - right down to the last drop of liquor. So I keep track. Your choice?"Connie was thinking that her choice would have been Kim, but simply said, "How about one of your wines?"Kim beamed. "I'm always looking. This is what she had been doing every weekday, for the last two years. She was a disciplinarian and did not like change. Every day, after reaching home, she would make herself a coffee, read for a while, go for a walk to the beach which was right across the road, cook herself dinner, and sleep. This particular day, she was missing home. But home was more than 10,000 miles and a month away.She had been living in a foreign land for more than two years now. Everything out there was better than.