Daycation
The sun is shining bright today and it is in the mid-fifties which is warm enough to open the window for the cat. Originally a street cat, he loves the smell of outside and will sit for hours on his cat tower and look out the window observing the happenings on Church Street. He particularly enjoys this activity when the window is open, although he is free to partake every day of his life as he has no responsibilities. Aside from the hairballs, perpetually wearing a fur coat, and having to poop in a box, I am really quite jealous of his lifestyle.
After two weeks off of work (one for vacation, one for bereavement) I return to the office tomorrow. While parts of the last several weeks were really hard there was also a lot to enjoy. Almost all of the time was spent in the company of family, a vast improvement from my usual solo life. I love my alone time, don’t get me wrong, but to sit around the living room in the mornings with relatives all enjoying cups of coffee and chatting is way better than abject silence, especially when grieving. I also spent lots of time reading (or listening to audio books), crocheting, and communing with the pets. We watched a lot of Downton Abbey. Mom and I got our hair done. We ate a lot of food and talked a lot about Grampy and Grams too, because you can’t really talk about one without talking about the other.
All of which is to say that I’m not ready to go back to work yet. Even with all the sadness hovering overhead, this time off has been revitalizing and sincerely needed. To go back to regular life seems counterintuitive. Why spend all this time off recovering and feeling my feelings just to return to a work schedule and attempt normalcy? Seems dumb. I object. Time off is SO much better than time on.
And yet resistance is futile. Back to work I go, but not before I make the most of my final day of vacation: a Daycation, if you will.
Today’s Objective: accomplish the minimum amount of chores to make me feel like I have successfully behaved responsibly enough so that I can then spend the maximum amount of time possible doing only exactly what I want to be doing while thinking about nothing of consequence and thereby suck every last morsel of enjoyment out of this last day of freedom.
On days like this I generally like to wake up early so that I have more time to achieve my objective. Unfortunately today is the one day that the cat let me sleep in, although it seems it did take him awhile to wake me up. Typically he rousts me by climbing all around my head and scratching at the sheets (having replaced one set of sheets that he destroyed I am not eager to do so again). This morning I must have been sleeping more soundly because not only are there claw marks on my bedding, but he did have to resort to pulling my hair to get me to move. By the time I was out of bed and feeding him it was 9:15, leaving me a mere twelve hours before I really need to be in bed to get to work on time tomorrow.
The “must do” list for today included:
grocery shopping - I’ve been gone for two weeks and had nothing to eat
get coffee - which really should have been first on the list for the safety of others
write my post - because this is officially my Sunday “job”
put away laundry - I was too tired yesterday when I got home so I left everything in a pile to be dealt with today
acquire actual food for dinner - because between all of the traveling and emotional eating I haven’t been making the best food choices
I started with the obvious first choice: get coffee. On Sundays, and especially this Sunday it being my Daycation, I allowed myself a trip to Starbucks. For the sake of efficiency I went to the Starbucks closest to the grocery store and used the drive through. Sufficiently caffeinated, I proceeded to the grocery store which is where my resemblance to a responsible adult began to fall apart.
Everything started out fine in the produce section. I picked out some Golden Delicious apples, a few cucumbers, and a container of spinach. (Realizing just now that I forgot to get carrots, dangflabbit.) Then I picked up some seltzer, a couple high protein pancakes in a cup, and looked around for a new thermometer for my fridge, which they did not have. For cleaning purposes I grabbed the big bottle of white vinegar and for the constantly slow draining bathroom sink, the big bottle of Drano. I even stopped in the vitamin aisle and restocked on my multivitamin (which set me back nearly twenty dollars so those damn things better actually benefit me in some way).
From there I found myself in the freezer section. First I picked up some frozen vegetables that you can steam in the bag. (I know that fresh vegetables are obviously better, but on a busy day I’m much more likely to eat something I can cook in the microwave without dirtying a pan and thusly I am a connoisseur of the frozen vegetable.) Shutting the freezer door with the veggies in my cart, I then looked across the aisle and in an instant became a mental eight year old.
I had spotted the pizza rolls just a shelf or two down from the frozen PB&J sandwiches, both foods that speak to my inner child/emotional eater. I walked over and stood in front of the door for a long time. Other shoppers continued to move past me but I barely noticed them, held in a trance by these bewitching junk foods.
“Of course I must purchase these,” I reasoned with myself as a box of pizza rolls somehow made its way to my cart. “It will be a treat, I deserve a treat.” One treat is fine, but after a moment’s pause I reached back in a grabbed a second box for reasons passing all understanding.
After the pizza rolls all bets were off, but thank goodness I was almost done with my shopping at that point. I could have ended up with a shopping cart full of products chosen by that manic eight year old in control of my body and mind, but managed to leave the store with just one further impulse purchase: a pack of four pudding cups, the kind with chocolate and vanilla layered together. When I saw it on the shelf I envisioned the deep happiness I would enjoy eating that pudding layer by layer, slowly and carefully scraping off every speck of the top chocolate layer before dipping into the vanilla, repeating the process until I reached the bottom of chocolate. This sparks joy for both the inner eight year old and the outer thirty-six year old.
Grocery shopping done, I returned home and put everything away. When I pulled the pizza rolls out of the bag and stuck them in my freezer I thought, “what the hell am I going to do with these?” I mean, obviously, eat them, but when? And also, why? Pizza rolls, for all their good qualities, are not actually what one might call real food. They are delicious and I praise their maker for conceiving of the idea, but still they lack nutritional value and have a high probability of burning the shit out of the roof of your mouth. Not the best choice for my morning of adulting.
I tried to shrug off my pizza roll shame and proceeded with putting away my laundry. That done, I opened the computer and commenced with the writing of this post. By the time this is completed and posted it will be nearly 3:00 and it will be time for me to check out of adulting mode and enter full vacation mode for the remaining six or so waking hours of the day. I look forward to this greatly, but can’t help but think about the damn pizza rolls in my freezer.
Looking back at my “must do” list for the day, I’m not sure I will have achieved every step, especially not that last one of acquiring real food for dinner. I did buy and now possess mostly real food in my kitchen and it would be entirely possible for me to eat something healthy for my evening meal, but I know myself. Now that the pizza rolls are there I feel almost obligated to get rid of them. Until they are gone they will haunt me every time I approach the fridge. They will whisper to me, reminding me that I willingly spent good money on them in a flash of irresponsibility, filling me with shame and hunger simultaneously.
And thusly my Daycation has been tainted by the scourge of adulthood. Even though I know I should not eat the damn pizza rolls, I will think about it for the rest of the day as dinner time approaches. My inner child will debate my inner adult (or what passes for one) and I will negotiate with myself, reasoning that if I eat the pizza rolls with a salad at least I’m getting something green as well. If I eat them now, then I won’t have them around as a temptation during the week when I go back to tracking my food. Whatever arguments I have for not eating them, I will come up with an equal number of arguments to just eat them and get it over with, even though I know it’s not good for me and I’d like to live past my fifties if at all possible. And there I go, thinking about things of deep consequence all because of one stupid purchase at the grocery store.
The pizza rolls I feel bad about. But you know what? Adulting is hard and life is short, so I’m going to enjoy the hell out of that pudding.
