A Muse Bouche

“I can’t wait for the weekend.”

That’s become the running joke at our house as we pad around in our socks looking for the next thing to do, or the next thing that we feel like doing since there are always tasks waiting around the house and yard or in the inbox. Tasks which once found their way onto schedules as we had time vs becoming the main event.

And now it IS the weekend. Technically, the week ends on Saturday and begins on Sunday on traditional calendars, so the word weekend for both days is clearly a misnomer. I don’t know what else we’d call it, some term that indicates the yin and yang of time, where one thing melts into its opposition in the dark hour of the clock. Arbitrary. A no-time time in a no-place place.

Which reminds me of an article I read recently from Scientific American about the “place” on the “north pole”–more of these no-place places–where the Earth’s time zones converge, as the author notes:

At the North Pole, 24 time zones collide at a single point, rendering them meaningless. It’s simultaneously all of Earth’s time zones and none of them. There are no boundaries of any kind in this abyss, in part because there is no land and no people. The sun rises and sets just once per year, so “time of day” is irrelevant as well. –Katie Weeman

All and none. That’s the sort of suspended place that the weekend has become when huge segments of the population work from home, some keeping business hours, others adapting workload across 24 hours of sweatpants; others out of work with no imposed schedules, no income. Most of us stuck inside the house.  The Weekend currently seems like a quaint construct, a memory from times past. Nearly meaningless. I mean, what’s so relaxing about never getting out of your pj’s  before noon if you’ve barely removed them for the past 7 days? Irrelevant indeed.

Today I got up, ate breakfast over the carefully handled newspaper (can’t quite give it up!), went upstairs and took my position at my computer where too many articles to read line up above the tool bar, took a break for a What’s App chat with my 3-year old grandson via his patient dad, then returned to email where a group of us celebrated the news of someone’s negative covid 19 test results. Later I did a half hour on my ancient Nordic Trak, ate some leftovers, and finally got into the shower after 1pm. Got dressed–yes, sweats–changed the bed, and here I am at my laptop once more, typing, simultaneously texting with a friend. We’re wondering whether a donut shop would be considered an essential service? I hope so….

That’s the good news: no news. That’s the weekend: no end, just reinventing what needs to be done–what can be done within this house or out in the rain–while this week awaits its mysterious end at midnight tonight, when somehow at that very instant, another week begins again.

Stay safe~