sunday afternoons

In general I dislike Sundays. It has probably been that way for the past four or five years. If I actually kept the Sabbath, I'm sure I would enjoy enjoy it more. But Sunday always seems to take the brunt of the consequences for my procrastination during the week and weekend. Cleaning and bills and emails and grocery-shopping and laundry and getting-a-hair-cut and scheduling and cooking and calls home and paperwork are perpetually shuffled off to that block of time called the weekend, which appears during the frenzy of the week as a vast, empty piece of real-estate burgeoning with opportunities for productivity. May your to-do list be writ 20 items long--a Saturday will always do to complete it! Now, either I am simply undisciplined or the weekend is a cheating little son-of-a-gun--promising acres of time and only providing about 10 square feet once you actually arrive on the property. Either way, I rarely accomplish over the weekend what I set out to when I pull into my parking spot on Friday evening after my commute home from work.

Of course I can't do anything on Friday night. Grocery shopping on Friday nights is for single losers and married people. I may very well be a single loser, but I would rather not advertise that fact to my fellow Evanstonians by taking part in those kinds of activities on a Friday night.

And then Saturday...gosh, it's nice to sleep in a bit, make breakfast, listen to talk radio, read Dostoyevsky on the couch. Errands are for the afternoon, tasks that require the most time, the least brain, and offer the most satisfaction when you press pen to paper and cross them off of your list. Evening arrives, and I've got plans and all day Sunday.

So it comes to pass: around 12:30 p.m. on Sunday I walk into my kitchen after church and I gripe about all that I must do. I want the couch and a novel; a nap or a movie; a walk or an afternoon concert; an hour on the piano; a glass of wine and a conversation. I don't want to write a check and send it away; I don't want to fill out tax forms; I don't want to renew my stupid parking sticker. Monday cometh, and such banal tasks only seem to speed its arrival. The only respite, the only mercy, is Sunday afternoon NPR. At least I can listen to Tavis Smiley while I wash dishes, or to BBC News while I compose message #43 in a thread of e-mails about something that really shouldn't have gotten that complicated...

Really I should be more diligent on Saturdays. I used to be when I was in college. It wasn't unusual for me to wake up at 8:30, pack up my laptop and book it to the library to stay until 3 or 4 p.m. Perhaps I just need to commit--really commit--to a schedule on the weekend. Maybe then I wouldn't hate my life on Sundays...