Well exactly Never and murmur. I submitted the paper in October and sent the tweaked version to my co-author today as "final submitted" and he thought it was pre-acceptance, it's been so long! And most of that was them messing with it and me going "WTAF" and then being off sick. Mainly the latter.
my yearly battle to explain to colleagues that I won't actually be working over Christmas
I don't. I used to do the odd day on a specific project if it had a deadline, pre-DCs. Then post DCs I tried to take a day off before Christmas, and told my department and HR that I'd work on a day when DH was at home, over Christmas, instead of that day. Then HR and my previous HoD started getting snotty about me working the actual days of the week that my part time contract states i.e. if I work MTW, but I take Weds before Christmas off and work on the following Tues when DH is at home, I still have to count the Weds I don't work as AL, and I can't count a day when campus is closed as work. Now I don't bother.
I was going to be doing a fair bit of marking over Christmas (I don't mind doing things I can do with the telly on and a glass of mulled wine, as that kind of feels like relaxing anyway), but some of that has been postponed anyway, so if I can get the last remaining marking done before we close I won't be doing anything. I might check if a larger piece I'm supposed to be marking in Jan has been submitted some time while I'm off, to get it out of the way. Or I might forget. But the OOO reply, with alternative people to contact, is going ON.
I was at an internal feedback session a while back with a female admin person whose DH is an academic and apparently works all the hours there are and she was complaining how it wasn't his fault that his HoD emailed him two days before Christmas to tell him he HAD to submit a grant proposal on Jan 2nd. She had moved out of research because someone had to spend some time with the DCs. Now I did not say this as forcefully as I should have, but actually, no, his HoD does not have the power to tell him he MUST do this over Christmas, unless he's on a temporary contract (this couple had both been at the university for years so I didn't think this was the case). It is, actually, possible to say no to some things just like it would have been possible for my friend's DH to say no he didn't want to be HoD when he found out they were going to have a baby two weeks before his HoDship would start, and not therefore refuse to do any night time care and sleep in a separate room because he would be "too tired" for work if he didn't. There are a lot of Bs in academia that I would have Ld long ago...
I think I've been back two weeks but we had some organisational issues at work and I had booked a day's AL for a personal thing, way back, last week, so I haven't got much done or been in much. Though I know it's not just that, part of what has made me particularly unwell is my reaction to negative things (e.g. being blocked by petty things in the department, horrible Reviewer 2 type comments etc.) and it's slightly triggering looking at some of the things I left undone - not that it's making me feel quite so bad again, but that it's making me remember how bad I did feel.