Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-01-31 - 7:25 a.m.

Workin

I wanted to write about something other than being tired, but the more I waited the more tired I got. So I give up. I'm going to write about tired.

Who invented working? Man, what a horse's ass that guy musta been.

I do okay at the beginning of the week. I'm like a car on a potholed road. I start out fine, but the further I go, the more stuff seems to vibrate loose. Things start falling off. My teeth rattle. By Wednesday I can't find my watch any more. Thursday the watch is still gone and I'm doing a last-minute check to make sure I'm wearing socks. Friday, still no watch, no socks, and I panic on the way to work - did I brush my teeth?

Mondays are cool. I'm so freakin' organized on Monday you might just want to slap me. I mean it. The weeks' menu is written on the board, and all the necessary items for dinners and school lunches and breakfasts are on hand. The kids have a weeks' clean clothing. My thermos is shiny and my clothes are planned for the ENTIRE WEEK and no, I am not kidding, I really did this, I got my clothes ready WITH matching socks and everything. My car had gas and I even - you won't believe this but it's really really true - I even got extra cash in singles when I did the grocery shopping so Younger Daughter would have lunch money without Mom having to root around under the seat of the car when I drop her off. Oh, I was so ready. I was so, so ready.

I used to own a Volkswagen. I loved that car. A '67 VW convertible bug with a 36-horsepower engine, and you knew one thing about that car: when you had to go up a grade, you better plan about ten miles in advance. Ten miles in advance you put the pedal to the metal and began to accumulate a few extra miles per hour, slowly, so that when you hit the bottom of the grade you were doing the breakneck Volkswagen warp speed of 82 miles per hour. And then you started up the grade with your foot on the floor, making darn sure nobody slower got ahead of you so that you had to lift your foot, leaning farther and farther into the steering wheel as those ol' 36 horses labored....and labored...and l a b o r e d. up the grade. If you were very lucky, you didn't have to pull over to the side of the freeway and put the car in first gear (only possible at a full stop). If you were lucky, you were still going around 12 miles per hour at the summit.

So that's why the completely obsessive-compulsive Monday laying-out of the clothes and shining of the thermos. I'm starting up the grade, and I want to get through Friday without having to pull over. There apparently, in the working world, IS no pulling over, anyway. There were also TWO, not one but TWO costume days at the middle school this week (what DID we wear in the eighties, anyway?), one "Literacy Night" at the elementary, and the usual odds and ends of parenthood, web site administration, laundress extraordinaire, short-order cook and so on. And I just don't think I am allowed to call in bewildered. "No, I just need a day to sit DOWN and think, that's all, then I'll find my watch and my thermos and be all ready to go again."

I think I'm doing about nine miles per hour tonight. Not quite slow enough to stall out, but just barely over the line. I know it could be worse; when I set out my work clothes on Monday, for example, I put my clean underwear in the pocket of the slacks, and then I thought, "Now, THAT is not a very good idea." So I could be doing two miles per hour; I could have reached into my pocket for something at work and produced instead a surprise handful of Victoria's Not-So-Secret. I didn't. There IS hope.

I'm going to go look for my bumper now, back there around Tuesday.

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