Tag Archives: weekend

Water under the bridge…

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Apparently I missed summer this year. I know I stayed busy and got plenty of things done, but I can’t quite put my finger on where the last four months went. The last thing I remember clearly is having birthday dinner and then suddenly waking up in September. And somehow I managed to let the time sail by without making it to the beach yet this year… which is made all the more ridiculous because it’s only an hour from the house. Sadly, that makes getting my toes in the sand just another victim of the list of things I had good intentions of getting done this summer but just didn’t get around to actually doing.

I like to think I spent the summer being highly productive, but it’s a bit of a stretch since I can’t point at anything concrete and say “Look what I did” while the warm weather got away from me. Maybe I should go ahead and start taking weekly pictures of cleaned rooms and a well turned out lawn. At least then I wouldn’t be so surprised when ninety or a hundred days blow by without even the common courtesy of a heads up.

As I’m sitting here writing this on Friday afternoon, I know it’s going to be Monday before I know it. I’ll do my best to cram as much into these two days as possible, but if someone has any tips on how to slow this ride down before it’s all water under the bridge, you’ve got my undivided attention.

OCD strikes again…

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I want to sit here and spend the whole weekend with my nose in a book. Between houseguests, tending to the sick and injured, and the general surprises that life throws at you, the last couple of weekends have not been the model of peace and tranquility that I tend to favor for my days off. That’s not a complaint, by the way; it’s just a statement of fact. I really, really want a nice quiet weekend in which I can try to work through the “to do” stack and bring a little order to the chaos. Most people reading this will surely know my abhorrence of half done things sitting around on every available flat surface. Yeah, I get a little irritable when things aren’t just so. It’s my OCD after all and I’ll piss and moan about it if I want to, thank you very much.

So yeah, my plan is to hit the ground running early tomorrow and take care of the must do activities – picking up groceries, going to the dump, getting the grass cut. Then if I can manage to at least get the downstairs cleaned up, that will go a long way towards reducing my current anxious state. It’s surprising how much ephemera piles up when you and two seventy pound dogs do most of your living in about 400 square feet of a 1200 square foot house. Have I mentioned how glad I’ll be when Winston gets the all clear to start moving around again? Let’s just forget for the moment that it’s still about eleven very long feeling weeks away.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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There’s a list of petty aggravations that I could try to puff up to make blog-worthy, but with this Thursday night being the kick off to a long weekend, coupled with a chance to visit with two of my favorite people in the world who I haven’t seen in over a year, I have to admit that the only thing that is really annoying Jeff this week is that fact that there’s still packing, a doctor’s appointment, and the need to drop off Maggie and Winston, and a two hour drive to Northern Virginia standing between me and really getting the weekend started properly. All things considered, it’s a pity there aren’t more weeks that are this kind of annoying.

Pack leader…

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I am the pack leader. I set the rules, provide the food, and make sure we are sheltered from the weather every night. When they get snippy with each other, I restore order and tranquility. So riddle me this, if I’m the pack leader, what makes it ok to poke me in the forehead with your cold wet nose? I know I’m definitely not the one who decided it was ok to wake up and hit the ground running at 6AM on a Saturday morning… but still, here I sit thirty minuets later clicking away at the keyboard while the rest of my pack has curled up on their beds and gone back to sleep. Anyone who ever said that leadership was glamorous clearly never had a dog.

It’s a good think I like mornings… and an even better thing that I like standing on the porch with a cup of coffee steaming in my hand watching the night give way to morning, listening to the horses across the road waking up, and enjoying an hour or two of peace before the rest of the world catches up with me. Maybe the dogs did me a favor this morning after all.

Jackpot dreams…

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A disturbing number of things I say every week start with the phrase “When I hit the PowerBall…” Usually that’s leading to some discussion of buying an island somewhere in the South Pacific and doing my best to ignore the rest of the world. It occurs to me that my needs are really much more mundane. Sitting here tonight, I suspect I could be bought off with much less than a full-blown lottery jackpot. Sure, the island or a well fortified Montana compound would be a nice touch, but I suspect I’d be perfectly happy just sitting here on the porch with the dogs at my feet and my nose stuck in a good book. I think I could potentially entertain myself like that for years, as long as I didn’t have a tiny little voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to get up at first light tomorrow to go sit in a cube for eight hours. It seems the better the weekend, the heavier the weight of Sunday night bears down. Bugger all.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Office politics. Henry Kissinger once said, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.” Dr. Kissinger is a smart guy, but his thinking was too small in this case. His principle ultimately includes office politics of any stripe. Fighting over who gets credit, who’s in charge, and for the seat next to the high lord at supper are exactly the factors that prevent anything from actually getting accomplished. Useless bloody infighting over scraps is apt to make me say something stupid.

2.Colo-rectal examination. I don’t care how good a professional relationship you have with someone, the people you work with never need to hear the explicit details of your upcoming and/or previous colo-rectal examination. Some things are best left within the confines of doctor-patient confidentiality.

3. The 5-day work week. Whoever decided that the work week should be five days and the weekend only two needs punched in the face. Repeatedly. With a Buick.

Morning…

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I try to block off weekend mornings to sit down and really focus on writing. It’s pretty much the only time of the week when I can get three or four hours uninterrupted to focus on a section that’s complicated or requires a lot of detail. Usually I can manage a couple of thousand words a day on Saturday and Sunday. Through the week, I’m lucky if I can squeeze in 500 somewhere between getting home from work, making dinner, and getting to bed at something like a reasonable hour. So yeah, I put a premium on my weekends not because I’m running off to some exciting locale, but because it’s when I feel like I’m doing my best work. In college, I did my best work in the dead of night. That’s when the words flowed best. Now that I’ve conditioned myself into a morning person, I guess the sweet spot has shifted too. That’s really not the point, though.

Today is Saturday and what I really want to be doing is sitting here taking a stab at the next chapter. Unfortunately, what I’m really doing is sitting here paying bills, cleaning up the balls of dirt, dust, and dog hair that are large enough to qualify as a third dog, and installing a new toilet seat (don’t ask). Today is pretty much catching up on all the stuff a normal person would have kept up with during the week. Me, not so much. I’m determined to pretend that I have a second full time career as a writer… and time slips away accordingly. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the basement and rummage around for a crescent wrench. Either this bolt’s coming off or the whole damned thing will shatter. Maybe I should go ahead and turn the water off while I’m down there.

If I don’t flood the house in the next hour and I can manage to get the grass cut in a reasonable amount of time, maybe, just maybe, I can salvage some quality time to write this afternoon… Just in time to get interrupted by dinner. Lord, no wonder people never finish writing their great American novel.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Anyone who is surprised that cocaine killed Whitney Houston. Instead of banner headlines on the news sites, maybe “Well, duh” buried on page 10 next to the ad for weekend specials at Donny’s Pancake House and Truck Stop would be slightly more appropriate.

2. People driving on a weekday afternoon like they don’t have a place in the world to be. I get that not everyone flies out the door at the end of the day at a dead sprint like I do, but still I’d think if you’re on the road during what approximates rush hour in northeastern Maryland you’d have some place you were trying to go. Apparently, though, there are a sizable contingent of people who are just out to have a look the scenery. In a Tharp administration, these people will be subject to targeting and neutralization by armed Predator drones circling high above major commuter routes. Sure, this might cause some additional delays, but at least those slow downs would have a legitimate reason for happening.

3. People who show up to things unprepared. I can’t throw down with the best slackers around when I set my mind to it, but one thing I never do is show up to a meeting or other activity without having a reasonable command of the subject matter. It doesn’t take that much effort to do your homework ahead of time. There’s a special place in hell reserved for people who wander in and waste two or three hours of your life because they don’t have a clue what’s going on around them.

4. It takes Friday entirely too long to show up every week. I think That one is pretty much self explanatory. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start my three-day weekend. And in case you’re wondering, no, that last part does not annoy Jeff.

The first twelve minutes…

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It’s Monday. I’ve been at my desk for about 12 minutes this morning. And someone just wandered by to ask if I had read the 15 separate issue papers that arrived over the weekend. Of course I’ve read them. Somewhere between finding the coffee pot, hanging up my coat, and waiting seven minutes for my computer to boot up. I know that some people spend the weekend thinking about these things and rush breathlessly into the office on Monday to get in there and “make a difference.” I, on the other hand, am a bit like an old car. I need time in the morning to warm up before jumping into anything requiring a lot of horsepower or fine motor skills.

Even on my best day, the answer to “what have I done in my first 12 minutes in the office” is pretty universally “not much.” Check back in an hour – or 45 minutes if you’re really in a hurry – and there’s a fair chance I’ll have had time to get caffeinated and come up with whatever you need. Believe me when I say that standing there looking at me haplessly like a mammoth stuck in the tar pits isn’t going to help your cause. It’s pretty much just going to annoy me more than usual and slow down the whole process.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.