Seven Days Of Sloth

I've had the most wonderful week off so far. I left my office for the last time on Friday, and my friend Alison took me to a bar where she bought me two glasses of champagne in twenty minutes, and I wish I could say that was an exaggeration, but she was late for a hair appointment and we had some catching up to do, so two glasses of champagne in twenty minutes it was. Boy, that'll knock you back, I tell you. I staggered home on public transport and promptly fell asleep on the sofa, where Sean found me an hour later when he came home from work, and then I was all "I DON'T HAVE A JOB ANYMORE!" and he was like "well, yes, you do, it just doesn't start for a week" and I was all "I'M IN THE NO-MAN'S LAND BETWEEN JOBS!" and he was like "wait, how much champagne did you say you drank in twenty minutes?"

Turns out the no-man's land between jobs is kind of wonderful. For perhaps the first time in five years, I didn't have the Sunday night gremlins. You know what the Sunday night gremlins are, right? The Sunday night gremlins are that horrible feeling so particular to a Sunday night when the weekend has wound down and you know you've got to get up early the next morning and go to work again. It's nothing to do with your actual job, you understand---you could be Cameron Diaz shooting a period biopic with a loincloth-clad Leonardo DiCaprio and you'd still get the Sunday night gremlins before Monday morning rehearsals started---but more a general sense of impending doom and anxiety.

(You get like that on Sunday night, right? Tell me you get like that on Sunday night.)

In a happy turn of events, the weather in San Francisco this week has been simply phenomenal. I'm not sure who is responsible for this string of 80-degree days coinciding with a) my week off and b) my husband finally stringing the hammock up in our back yard, but I would like to shake that person very firmly by the hand and also buy them a very strong cocktail, probably something summery like a G&T. At first, I felt sort of guilty that I wasn't really Doing Anything with my week off---you know, going to museums or getting mid-week brunch at places that have really long lines on the weekend---but then after a while I realized that I didn't really care. What I wanted from this week off was just long swathes of uninterrupted time to tootle around my house, doing not very much of anything. I wanted time to spraypaint the ancient patio chair I bought at a tag sale six months ago. I wanted time to buy and plant flowers in my new window boxes. I wanted time to read a whole novel in one go while wearing a bikini and sitting in the aforementioned patio chair. I wanted time to research a present for Sean's birthday in a few weeks and make a beef stew and do laundry and sell the hammock stand on Craigslist, and all sorts of other banal, domestic errands that fall by the wayside when you have a demanding 8-6 job and a 45-minute commute each way.

And I got all that, and it was wonderful. Man, it was so wonderful. I also slept in and kept the kitchen cleaner than I've ever kept it before and caught up on a lot of email and saw friends on two different mid-week (mid-week!) evenings. I went to Target on a Tuesday morning, which was its own special treat---who knew that it's not a madhouse if you don't go on the weekend? I mean, who knew?!---and I spent a long, leisurely time picking out shampoo and tank tops and sunscreen and new bathing suits for both me and Sean (way to be a one-stop shop, Target swimwear department!) because tomorrow morning, bright and early, we're going to Maui.

Whoa! Maui! That was pretty much my reaction too, when the plans were finalized last week and the flights booked, because it was something of an unexpected, sudden offer---I'm going care of the wonderful people at BlogHer; I shall report back later---but as surprises go, it really couldn't have been more perfectly timed. After all, I've been practicing lazing around for the last four days anyway; for the next three, I shall be a complete and utter pro.