Does it feel like Saturday?
It sure doesn’t feel like Saturday to me. I assume that’s because yesterday was a holiday.
Of course, at this point in my life the days of the week don’t have the sharp delineations they used to have. No child of mine is in school. Nobody in my house is going to work. I get up each day and at some point I go to my rickety old computer (I need a new one but hate technological transitions) and pound away. Later I exercise, usually going for a 3-mile walk outside if the weather is forgiving. The day I generally take off is Sunday, as regular readers no doubt know.
But other days of the week still sometimes have a distinct “feel” to them, a relic of that time in my life when weekends were very special indeed. No school! Friday night and Saturday were the best. Freedom, including freedom from the crushing burden of homework (we used to have a lot of it). But as a procrastinator, for me Sunday was the day of reckoning. Actually, the night of reckoning.
I recall I had some friends who did their homework as soon as they came home from school. This seemed astounding to me – how could they? Didn’t they need some down time after a day of being chained to their desks? Didn’t they want to play outside while it still was light?
By the way, if anyone is curious what I mean by “a lot” of homework – by fifth and sixth grades we usually had around three hours of it every single night. That was in public school in New York.
My wife and grown son were both pretty sure yesterday was Saturday, and don’t quite understand why it is Saturday again today.
Glen H:
Exactly.
I retired on 12/31/2019, and since then, there have been only three days in the calendar; “today”, “tomorrow”, and “yesterday”, and they’re mostly the same. I really didn’t notice much change with the COVID lockdowns, except that my wife was prevented from making house-hunting trips. So we ended up buying a house online, sight-unseen, with a good realtor, Zillow and Google Street View.
Now that we’re here, every day is mostly the same, which is “mostly good”.
Yeah, it feels like Saturday.
On the computer viewing a YouTube instructional “how to” on replacing the drive belt of the natural gas clothes dryer. I have a virtually new one in storage. So why am I doing this? Because I want to wring the last life out of the old one and have the satisfaction of seeing it fail catastrophically, I suppose.
Nineteen bucks spent two hours ago on a belt, and now 90 minutes ahead laying on the floor threading the belt through the idler or squirming around fumbling with sheet metal screws: first to back out, then to reset.
By the way, it’s amazing how little there is to one of these devices. A gas burner, some shielding and vents, a drive motor and belt and idler arrangement for the drum. A little wiring, a few clips, a couple of fuses and sensors.
Yes, it’s Saturday.
Well next year Christmas is on a Saturday and the year after it’s on a Sunday so that will be confusing also.
Wait, it’s Saturday?! I thought it was Thursday.
I retired on Wednesday, which was not Friday but felt like it since I left knowing I wasn’t going back. So Thursday seemed like Saturday, and Friday seemed like Sunday, except that it was also Christmas, and as for today, I’m completely confused.
I think there was a movie about this, “Groundhog, Part Duex” or was it “Return of the Groundhog?”
Kenneth+Mitchell (3:45 pm) confesses, “I retired on 12/31/2019, and since then, there have been only three days in the calendar; ‘today’, ‘tomorrow’, and ‘yesterday’, and they’re mostly the same.”
I share the sentiment, but not the retirement date (mine was back in 2012). But there’s one additional day that stands out: April 1st, because that’s the day when our esteemed landlord “neo” will find some way to pull our collective legs. Mark that date!
Getting my annual exam couple of months back. The cognition questions required of old folks included day and date. I was clueless. That doesn’t matter in my life. Asked about month, I said this week was October, while last week’s more severe weather had been November. What are they going to do to me? Got top marks in “Smarty Pants”
It’s always either yesterday, today or tomorrow… 😉
I too am retired and when holidays arrive, I too often get off schedule. In between holidays, I usually know what day of the week it is, though to be sure, I occasionally have to check…
The easiest way to tell if it’s Saturday is to see if Steve Hayward has posted PowerLine’s “The Week in Pictures” or not.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/the-week-in-pictures-stimulus-edition.php
I am in my middle 70’s and retired the last time in 2013 and then moved to the Texas Hill Country which is rather nice. My first year or two I had trouble adjusting and missed every day, in person, contact with other folk and then, I remembered, my old man coffee table buddies in Dallas told me to just hang on and get used to the fact that every day is Saturday with nothing to do and nowhere to go and settle down and get the retired rhythm and within a year or two I did.
It took a bit of time and I do work hard to have things on my calendar, places to be and things to do and I like my Sundays in church with friends but the COVID stuff has been easy for me since my wife and I live in a nice little place with enough yard work to keep me be busy most of the year and she keeps busy enough too.
This being old is not too bad since I keep up with our kids and get pictures of grandkids every day or two, that and for me getting to go shoot competition and practice shooting each week keeps me going for now.
“Didn’t they want to go play outside while it still was light?”
Treasured. Cherished. A distant memory.
Now, sadly and tragically, one can drive through a ‘young families’ neighborhood and see NO KIDS PLAYING. Or, even riding bikes.
Einstein’s profoundly accurate prediction (on steroids). I’m so, soooooo grateful for the post-war time when we were growing up, Neo.
Years ago when I was contemplating retirement I asked a friend who had already made the leap what he did with his days. He said he got up early as he always had, but with nothing much to do, and by late afternoon typically found he was only half done. I was kind of confused about that until I retired and then I found that I would plan what I was going to do for the day but with no real deadlines, what used to take a couple of hours might not be done in six. Made all the sense in the world then.
I retired in 1996 (policing is a young man’s game and they release us early) and learned these things. I have warned others that the problem is every day is a “honey-do” day, and there is no Monday… the day you run off to work to have an extra cup of coffee and scan the sports page before taking on the week. I keep track of the days by reading the tops of my medication tray; the empty box was yesterday and the next full one is today.
We are also moving (Cal-exit) and house hunting on-line. Scary.
DNW: I have a chain saw with a scored piston in need of replacement. I feel your pain. The best remedy is to see what it would cost to have someone come to the house and fix it for you. 🙂