Friday, January 13, 2006

TGIF

For the first time in a long while, I am reminded of the glory, the satisfaction, the relief (O! the relief!), and the feelings of freedom and abandon that come with Fridays, the finest day of the week. Did you know the name 'Friday' comes from the Old English word 'frigedaeg', meaning the day of the 'Frige'... or the Norse god of beauty? And what a beautiful day it is. 'Thank God it's Friday!'

TGIF! -- oh how we love acronyms. We love this one so much, it's also used as shorthand for: 'Teen Girls in Faith', 'Thank God I'm Female', and for the mentally challenged, 'This Goes In Front' and 'Toes Go In First'. Can you imagine a pair of trousers with 'TGIF' printed on the crotch or a pair of socks labeled 'TGIF' as instructional aids? Just like plastic bags that are labeled to denounce their use as toys and proclaim the danger of asphyxiation if, say, someone put the bag on his head and closed off the open end... All of these things, stupid 'TGIF' acronyms included, should be outlawed. Mother nature intended that the 'fittest' should survive and the weak... well, the weak aren't good for the collective gene pool. If a person wants to tie a plastic bag onto his head, I say let him. Especially if it's a Friday; we could make up an acronym for him, 'That Guy Is Finished'.

But seriously...

Today it's Friday and right now that means 2 days of rest are to follow -- we've been taking a Thai massage course all week, 6 hours per day, and we begin another week on Monday. We have 2 days of rest! Thinking -- no, rejoicing -- in this, I was reminded of home. I haven't felt such elation for a Friday since we hit the road. Huh.

Not only that, having a schedule reminds me about how, at home, we chop our time up into bits -- bite sized bits, king sized bits -- morning and afternoon, evening and night; week days and weekends and months... semesters, quarters, years. I've completely forgotten how it is to live by this structure since I've been traveling. There are no bookends to the week, like Mondays and Fridays, and bookends to the weekends, like Friday afternoons and Sunday nights (and aren't Sunday nights depressing?). On the road I have no schedule -- often I don't even know what day of the week it is -- I have no structure. I have ditched the calendar. I have unshackeled myself from its little boxes and grids and numbers. Time does not 'march on'; it flows, it glides, it rolls. I feel free; like a collar has been removed from my neck, like a chain has been unlocked from my leg.

Now that I'm reminded of weeks and weekends, calendars and schedules... It gets me thinking about our return home, wondering how I'll cope with the Monday-through-Friday workaday life... it won't be ideal, but I know it will be OK. Humans can adapt to anything (a big lesson learned through traveling). And at least I'll have Fridays to look forward to. TGIF.

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