The schedule I currently have with my two jobs is bizarre at best. Monday and Tuesday mornings in Point Reyes, those same afternoons in Glen Ellen, then a random meandering through the rest of the week. All this means that my days off come as randomly as the meandering schedule allows. Sometimes I have a Friday off. Sometimes a Saturday. Once every two or three weeks I will actually get two days off in a row, which is shocking. (Those throw me for a loop, which I will pursue in another blog.) This week my day off was Wednesday.
It has been a very, very long time since I have had a Monday through Friday job with weekends off. To tell you the truth, I cannot remember when that was. Perhaps in the fabulous 80's but then drugs were involved, ever so slightly. (Scandalous!!!) And motorcycle clubs and gangs and Satan worship and ritualistic initiation practices. (HA! Gotcha!) So even those typical weekends have been relegated to the far reaches of my mind. Way, way back there. Ghosts of a memory of a scheduled Sat-Sun off, I can barely remember how that was. Seriously. Hospitality industry means weekend work. Grocery retail means weekend work. Oyster farm means weekend work. Service work means weekend work.
Sorry, off on a flashback there, I guess. Back to task: having a Wednesday off is odd. It's good because no one (almost) else has Wednesday off. But it's bad because it chunks up that DNA feeling that says "oh, cool, now it's the weekend" sort of thing and thus part of me wants to drink Margaritas like it's Friday night because, what the hell, I have Saturday to sleep it off! But, again alas, no. Not. Going. To. Happen.
However, it was the day I had off. Jenn and I (mostly Jenn because of my fucked up back) cleaned house, washed floors, cleaned the kitchen, went to the laundromat (that was me!) and the house is so, so clean and nice. But it still reminds me of Saturdays. When I was a kid, Saturday was the day we all had to stay home, didn't get to hang with our friends, and we had to clean the house. We all had chores: bathroom cleaning, mopping floors, vacuuming, stripping and remaking beds and on and on. So a day like today, when we cleaned everything, feels like a Saturday to me. I should have Sunday off, right? But no. Back to work.
It's just so odd that our bodies and our minds play those patterned, historic tricks on ourselves. As a kid, cleaning house meant tomorrow was a day off. As an adult, a real day off means you don't go to work and you can lounge around in your pajamas and eat chips and watch TV. But that rarely happens either. So this weird magnet in my mind and body that wants to draw me over to the 'traditional' weekend days off scenario is wrong. How can I re-program myself to accept a day off as just that? I don't yet know but am trying figure that out. I should be able to tame that feeling but at this point, I just have visions of another Margarita and no alarm in the morning. Fat chance of that!
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