Cold and rainy where we make our home this week; snow just a few hundred feet higher up the hill.
Saturday I forced Sharaun to be complicit in one of my cleaning/organizing jags, and we tore through dusty closet shelves, cluttered and overspilling bedside drawers, and under-bed catacombs. And, after shifting storage locations for an innumerable amount of useless junk, we managed to actually rid ourselves of a good bit and better hide the rest. Sunday night I made hot cocoa and we rented a movie.
Keaton awoke that day from her nap and was burning up, carried a fever throughout the night. She was running hot off and on all Monday, but we keep it down by dosing her with Motrin. Even when that girl’s got a high fever, she’s bright and bubbly – the day she ever gets really sacked by a cold is the day I’ll be worried.
You know… I’ve never had much need for country music, but if you read here with an regularity you likely remember me softening quite a bit on that position over the last half of this year. Think of it as a “country awakening” or something; my personal realization that almost no genre or style of music is, in a wholesale sense, “bad.” Well, I suppose there are exceptions – death metal being the one coming to mind.
Anyway… as the year turns colder and greyer, and the doldrums I’ve been navigating at work persist daily – I’ve decided that some good, solid country crying music suits my mood quite well. Explains my recent wont for the earlier works of Waylon, Willie, Merle, and the like. Some of these whiskey-soaked ballads just “click” during downtimes like these… guess country is good for something after all, eh?
The aisles at work are already showing early signs of Christmas evacuation, even ten days out. It’ll only get worse (or better, depending) as this week works its way into the short one following. I like it, actually, because it affords me an opportunity to get some work done without interruption. And, being honest, it also makes for a great “sneaking out early” environment.
When it’s just the tumbleweeds and me holding down the sawmill, I don’t feel as guilty about heading for the homestead to finish the day remotely from the couch and spend some time with Sharaun and Keaton. A wise manager once told me not to “waste” vacation time on Christmas, advising that most of our customers and we too effectively “shut down” around the holidays – making for some great “short days.” Since we usually head south for Christmas, this’ll be the first year I’ll actually get to try that advice. I so desperately need some “don’t care” time, I pray the advice is sound.
Until tomorrow then, wish me luck at shirking work, K? Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- pert near impossible - 2009
- déja vu politics - 2005
- if Good Morning America is any indication - 2004
- a rock in my ear - 2003
Good luck shirking work. I plan to be right there with you. Maybe we can put together some half-day activities like beer drinking or something.