When I was a little kid, I loved the feeling I got on Fridays, that sense of being about to jump off the ledge of the long, boring week and land smack at the beginning of the weekend. Back then, I suffered through the rules and the tedium of the school week, enlivened only a little by cinnamon rolls on the lunch tray or Stamp Club on Wednesdays, counting down the days and then the hours until I could be free to do whatever I wanted until school reined me in again on Mondays. Whatever I wanted usually consisted of playing outside until dark, running to the curb every time I heard the fire truck, and reading a good book while eating cereal straight out of the box.
Not so much has changed since I was a little kid. I've traded a five-day school week for a three- or four-night work week at a job where I not only get to stay up all night (only my grandma ever let me do that when I was little) but I get to see and hear fire trucks every day. In between the 911 calls and the paperwork and the firefighters coming in to gripe about getting banged out on a call in the middle of the night, there's enough downtime for me to wish sometimes that I was somewhere else, just like I did when I was little. And Fridays (at least every other one, nowadays) still mean that I'm on the verge of being able to do whatever I want. The best part of being a grown-up is that now my weekends last for three or four days.
So here I am, with a little over three hours left on this shift and 12 more hours tonight, and I already have that jumping-off feeling. Tuesday I tilled up the front yard where the icky vinca used to be and spread out mushroom compost, hoping it would rain this week so the compost would soak into the dirt. And it did. I love it when things work out like I planned. (Possibly because it so rarely happens.) If the weather cooperates, I'll transplant some hostas from my mom's yard into my yard and buy some coral bells to plant there, too. Eighteen chicks are peeping in their nesting boxes at the farm and seven more are due to hatch by today, so I'll go see them and then take a walk through the woods with my friend. After some cautious wheeling of my left arm, I've determined that my shoulder is feeling good enough to maybe hang a strip or two of wallpaper in the front parlor. The book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is even better than the movie version and deserves a few hours of my attention sometime in the next four days, most likely while sitting on the front porch with a dog and a cat or two. I'll try my best to convince my son and three or four of his friends to bring home the clawfoot tub that Hildy's donating to me. And speaking of Hildy, if he's in town we'll no doubt sit on the tufted settee at the Franklin Hole, drink a beer or two, and solve the problems of the world.
I can't wait for the weekend to get here.