In the same way that I can trick myself into getting up on time by setting my alarm clock at least 27 minutes fast, the three-day weekend screws up my reality base so much that I can almost be convinced that O.J. is still trying to find the “real killer”. I could have sworn on my life that Tuesday was Monday. It looked like Monday. It smelled like Monday. It had the same frumpy sunset as Monday. But, hey–wait a minute–now it’s Wednesday! How did you do that, Monday?
Every week is a mini marathon at our house, with a full-force shove into Monday and ending in a desperate crawl to Friday evening. Must……find…….antedote…… I don’t mean to complain about our life. Some people eat a variation of paste at every meal, and spend the bulk of their time trying not to be killed, raped or sold. I can definitely handle a little old-fashioned, middle-class, American stress. Especially when I am equipped with Swedish Fish.
On Tuesday (the fake Monday) Ryan found out he won a travel award for next school year, which entails a couple of all-inclusive trips to Psychology conferences in San Francisco and Boston. While Psychology conferences might not sound exciting to you, there are actually people who pay their own way in order to attend these mind-numbing presentations and mingle with others who are fascinated with multivariate statistics. Thank goodness I am not married to one of them! If he goes, it’s because someone else is footing the bill, and because everyone else will be so consumed with the interpersonal correlates of cardiovascular disease and marital satisfaction, they will never notice that he is at the outdoor market with his wife buying souvenir refrigerator magnets.
It’s these little rewards that make all of this tolerable. Days like today, you actually think somebody gives a crap about how hard you’re working to reach your goals. Ryan’s life is consumed with our future, and my life is consumed with our present. Almost everything he does is an investment in some faraway dividend, and almost everything I do is an effort to keep us afloat and in clean underwear. And almost every day we both wonder–Is it almost Friday, for crying out loud?
