I found this sentence from my exercise book (Oxford Grammar):
I felt lazy, and because I didn't have any real work to do, I took the afternoon off.
The execise instructs me to guess whether it's correct or not. The key answer is correct, but I have a question. Why isn't this sentence written like this:
Because I felt lazy and I didn't have any real work to do, I took the afternoon off.
Which one is more grammatical? If there's none, please provide your version. The reason I think the first sentence above seems to be weird is because and and because are placed together consecutively. In my opinion, it has the structure:
《Main clause/stand-alone sentence》 + 《conjunction》 + 《complex sentence (subordinate + main clause)》.
Again, in my view, would it sound better if the structure is written like this:
《Subordinate clause》 + 《Main clause》
Where the subordinate clause in my version carries equal-weight clause.