Thursdays.

I’m starting to feel like Arthur Dent. It used to be (for about three weeks this fall) I had a really easy Thursday. I walked over to the school building, sat in the detention room as monster-in-residence all morning, and didn’t have a single class until after lunch. All three classes, boom boom boom, walk home again, and zone out — write a little poetry, do a little art, hang around and have fun.

Then the schedule changes came. First, I got tapped as the relief coach for outdoor adventures. Not a big change, except now I’m working from 2:45 pm to 4:30 pm as a coach. Then I picked up an extra tutee, and now I’ don’t have that whole free morning thing going for me (except when some kid gets tossed out of class). Then fencing from 3 pm to 4:30 pm in the winter, instead of O.A.

Now it’s a three or five-mile walk in the afternoon from 3-5 pm. Beautiful hike in the woods where we had our equinox circle, up the hill and across the high plains to the Table, and the Cave. Home again, arriving in the parking lot of the school at 5:10. This is followed by a shower at 5:15, getting the kids dressed from 5:15 to 5:40 (and how many were still in their boxers at the dinner bell? Six?) and presiding at dinner (I said grace tonight and closed the meal, and tried to bring a vague sense of order to the meal. Failure. Guess this means I’m not skipping Thursday meals any more). No longer am I starting my days with casual mornings…. Thursdays just run over me.

At dinner, Loquacious Music invited me to go with him and Hi-Tech over to the local dive for a drink. It’s not really a dive — it’s a fairly fancy place, lots of different martinis and great desserts. Woo-hoo! I have bread pudding and Irish Coffee for fun. Hi-Tech pays because I paid for him last quarter; Loquacious Music drives me home.

I start the first of four loads of laundry, and manage to do a little bit of picking up before the sugar runs out, the caffeine kicks out, and the alcohol kicks in. Cue loud snoring on the freshly-made bed for an hour and a half or so. Awakened by the Ping that indicates someone is IMing me. I go out to discover what friend or friends is/are trying to communicate, and discover it’s someone with a highly-offensive user name (how one manages to combine neo-nazism, slutty behavior, and mutual oral sex and get away with it, I don’t know. But it happened. I hit the ignore button and send him (her?) to electronic exile.

The dinner table is still a mess. The coffee table is still a mess. There’s still clothes in piles, but at least the piles are in the laundry room now and not between the door and the bed. Progress was made; even the dishes in the dishwasher are now clean.

Still have to vacuum, put away books, clear the dining room table, and clear the piles from the top of the stairs. Not insurmountable, but one Irish coffee was enough to knock me down and end my day in a real hurry.

Thursdays. Maybe it’s just this particular Thursday, but I’m wiped.

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