Wednesday is the New Friday

My middle-age memory is not always so impressive, but I can almost remember a time when Friday was the most exciting day of the week. Work on Fridays was checkered with intervals of making plans and getting ready for the fun that would happen that evening and that would sometimes carry on for most of the weekend. The feeling was akin to Fred Flintstone hearing that whistle blow, grabbing his prehistoric lunch box and sliding down the neck of that amazingly amicable dinosaur. Ironically many of those Fridays involved getting all dolled up to go out and socialize with the possibility of meeting the man of my dreams—which inevitably leads us directly to some very different Fridays in the future.Low and behold, one of those fun-filled nights I did indeed meet the man of my dreams. Slowly the Fridays of my youth gave way to a bouncing baby girl, which was a dream come true. I suppose with less need for dreams—there followed less time for sleep or at least the kind I used to be able to devote myself fully to. Fridays morphed from being the threshold between work and play into the baton-pass between laps and laps of going and going and going some more. It turns out that misery does love company and so while some saints, martyrs and liars will disagree that bringing a baby into the world is at once amazing and quite surprisingly the most difficult experience of our lives—I can only use my own experience as a reference and will respectfully disagree with others who remember only sunshine and rainbows. And so I was happy to have my husband join in the misery and a sprinkling of precious moments each weekend.

A near-complete handful of children later, my brain and body pretty much shut down by Friday. I made the mistake of signing one of my girls up for something fun one year that met weekly on Fridays at about dinner time. Wow—what a mistake that was. I could not think of anything more taxing than raising four very young children all week just to wrap up the week by having to venture out of the house each Friday during rush hour to find parking and then do it again 45 minutes later when all I wanted was to sit and settle in. Never again.Eventually I learned to adjust to my evolving—perhaps dissolving—body and mind knowing that Fridays were my weakest point and that no matter how much fun my kids may have—I had to first apply the oxygen mask to myself before I could possibly be of any value to them. Picture that movie where Tom Hanks washes up on an island and a soccer ball becomes his new bestie—that was me every Friday as I would wash up from the weekday ocean with barely enough energy to crawl up onto each sandy, dry weekend.[1]

So, how am I doing these days? It is about a decade after I gave birth to our first child. The learning curve was pretty steep with that first new life we brought into the world. I am no longer a near-constant presence on the couch nursing and we have even made it out of the life-sized maze of diapers in their various sizes and “pull-up” evil disguises. So, aren’t things getting less exhausting? Well, here is where things get wonky.

My kids are all “in school.” Ok, a couple are only in for three hours at a time and not every day—so, yes, barely the time for a shower, a cup of tea and a phone call. Phone calls? Forget those. You will chat with your old Friday Friends about once every month or two if you’re lucky and if one of you is really ambitious—which, if that friend also has kids chances are they are ambitious, but neither of you is a miracle worker.

So, kids are “in school” as barely true as that statement may be. I think to myself, “I have a few ‘extra’ hours,” which I don’t but I tell myself that, and so “I want to start to do some things I have put on hold.” I start to do those things and, being the type of person I have been for some time now, I will do those things in a way that holds me more accountable than I am prepared to be, therefore forcing me to commit to my goals. Now I—possibly you can relate to this—am between two worlds and that is challenging in a good way, exciting in a refreshing way and—well—exhausting in an eye-twitching and information-falling-out-of-my-ears way.

By the time Wednesday comes along I am convinced it must be Friday because my mind and body are breaking down like they used to do on Fridays. I check my calendar: it’s Wednesday. This can’t be! Ahh . . . but it is. Wednesday has become the new Friday (the new one—remember—not the old one that was the prelude to youthful abandon) and I am just going to have to find a floating crate or kick my feet and work that doggy paddle like nobody’s business until that island of sandy respite can be seen on the actual calendar-verified Friday.

Have a good weekend, whenever it arrives and remember: T.G.I.--something or other.

[1] After writing the first draft of this blog entry, I reflected and thought how I couldn’t—and still can’t—remember the title of the movie that I am referencing here with Tom Hanks and his soccer ball bestie. Then, I thought of how I should note that it made sense that I couldn’t remember the title because it is Friday and therefore my body and mind are no longer working at full strength. What was really funny was that indeed it was not Friday, but still Thursday, further exemplifying how Wednesday truly has become—at least at this present moment in my life—the new Friday and that even after very consciously writing about this whole phenomenon on a Thursday I was, only moments later, convinced it was at last Friday. Alas, it is not. Ugghh!