Friday is here

Today marks the end of the work week. Most people who work the usual Monday to Friday shift will be patiently waiting for the five o’clock whistle to start their weekend (except for people employed in retail, food service, hospitals and correctional facilities). So what do you do with those two days free with no obligations to that job that pays your bills? Well the possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination and money. I throw money in there because if we all had an unlimited amount of it, most of us wouldn’t have to work a nine to five job thus making every day a “Friday”. Anyway, today is the day that springboards you into the weekend and I fear that most folks, like me, will have their mind not on the tasks they are getting paid to do today. Instead they will ponder what crazy events they want to cram into the next two days. Keep this in mind the next time you keep a Friday dental appointment and the dentist is rooting around your mouth with a high speed drill.

Every weekend can’t be a vacation. Projects that you’ve put off all week because you were just too tired to mess with after a day of work will need to be done. Those of us with lawns that are still growing will need a bit of upkeep so that the neighbors don’t think you are attempting to grow wheat in your front yard. Laundry that has piled up all week will require some attention unless you want to do the whole “wear your underwear inside out” to get a few more days use out of them. And the weekend is a perfect time to find out what is causing that smell in the fridge as it hasn’t “gone away” like you had hoped it would. But all work and no play makes you a boring person. Let’s not forget to fill the weekend with some fun things to do. Go visit a pumpkin patch and pick out some gourds to carve up. Meet a friend for fondue because those meals take like forever! Taunt a friend who is training for an IronMan triathlon and challenge him to a Buffalo Wing eating contest! Better yet, enjoy the benefits of the season and do some leaf peeping (unless you live in Texas where leaves quickly transform from green to brown in the blink of an eye and it usually happens some time in December).

I found that when I returned from Iraq, I learned to appreciate the weekends a lot more than I did before the deployment. Because the mission over there only allowed us half a day off per week (and sometimes not even that), we learned quickly to prioritize our free time in order to maximize its benefit to our sanity. This usually meant more sleep, or as much as you could get as the sun tried to bake you in the tin can of your hooch. Regardless, I try not to take the weekends for granted.

Unfortunately the deployment didn’t change the fact that I am a busy-body and don’t like to be sedentary for very long. My weekends start as early as my weekdays, much to the dismay of the people around me who enjoy the pleasures of sleeping in. I try to respect their need for rest as I too hold rack in high reverence. It’s just that I can’t sleep in so I might as well do something constructive. This use to involve some sort of physical activity like running, bike riding, or squirrel chasing, but I’ve recently found more time to do that during the week which frees up my weekends to do... well, to do anything else except physical activity. I’ve got plenty of tasks at the house to work on as it is always in need for some sort of tweak or repair. Plus, with the cost of gas coming down, I am no longer bound by the distance I can go without selling a kidney to pay for the fuel required to take a long road trip.

So go out and spend the next two days doing something fun. It will make valuable deposits into your bank of experiences that makes the difference between living and existing. As for me, I’m not sure what the weekend will hold for me, but I know that I’d much rather be doing a lot of other things, like trying to stay in bed just a little longer in order to keep it warm, traveling by plane to see old friends or taking a hay ride someplace in Virginia.