Fat Pants

It is 1 am on Friday, so I guess technically I'm late again, having missed the Thursday regular posting time. However, I haven't gone to bed yet for Thursday, so according to my circadian rhythm timer, I'm still on time. I guess the tiebreaker will be that, being on the west coast of these United States, I'm in the trailing darkness of Pacific Time whereas most of you are closer to dawn than sunrise. And since this blogspace is in no way a democracy, I invoke the primacy of authorship to give full weight to my location and its associated NOW. I hereby declare this entry to be On Time. It's 2017 and we're in Trump America, where we do things by fiat and fit. Time to start getting used to it.

But as it's 1 am on barely-post-Thursday, this will be a very short entry. I would say it's because I'm tired, but I'm on my third consecutive vacation Thursday night (my extended leave-taking started Friday 23 December). The normal bounds of day and night within the borders of sleep have been eroded by entertainments and distractions of various kinds to the point where I'm happy to report that I'm not particularly exhausted while at the same time I'm being slowly squeezed by an encircling python of dread as I consider Sunday night trying to get to sleep in time to arrive at work Monday in any kind of shape that resembles functional. Best thing to do: go ahead an pre-emptively write that Monday off as lost time. Productivity is a relative idea anyway. I have a lot of YouTube channels to catch up on. That's not zero effort. Close, but not zero.

This should be the point where I sum up bits and bobs of what I've been doing/accomplishing over this break, but I will reference you to the paragraph above re: entertainments and distractions. This is the first extended vacation (more than one or two days) I've taken probably since college, back when it was called "summer." And I'm nearly at the point now (in March I think) where "college," meaning every single bit of it, beginning to end, will have been 20 years ago.

To be fair, though, there was that almost 9 year period in the middle where I was staying home every day with my kids. But I can't tell if that means I had 9 years off in a row or zero days off for 9 years. I'm not sure. That whole period is kind of a blur of diapers and tears by now. I don't know quite what to say about it anymore, except the pay was shit. Usually literally.

I still have the normal confines of a long weekend ahead of me before I return to re-face the horrors of everyday work life. Yes, there's a gray cubicle out there, quite literally, with my name on it. It's the kids' weekend with their mom and my lady-companion is out of town on some fairly awful family business, so it's an opportunity for me to be honestly on my own, to center myself, to plant a firm emotional and spiritual base from whence I can then extend myself back into the world with balance, grace and purpose. Mostly this will mean finishing off the ginger-molasses cookies I made for Christmas that nobody ate but are my favorite things, like ever. When I say "firm base" I'm mostly talking about noticeable weight gain. I'll let you know how it goes.