Another week has gone by, and it was once again time for the Saturday supply run. This week I had a few more stops than usual, since we needed some odds and ends from Target, I managed to drop my phone while running an needed a new screen protector, and we have a dog that really likes to eat and would likely not be happy to discover we had run out of her food.
This all followed a week that just seemed jam packed every minute of every day. I woke up a little slow and groggy, and took a particularly uninspired “run” before going to the store. I have to put the word “run” in quotations because any simple fact check of whatever it was I did outside on Saturday morning wouldn’t really line up with any conventional definition of that word.
That whole rambling run-on sentence is basically just my convoluted, self deprecating way of saying, “I felt pretty tired.”
But I managed to shove on through the whole shopping, unloading, disinfecting process. I am developing a robotic-like efficiency with the whole thing after all these weeks.
Memo to myself: work on inventing and patenting robot shoppers and disinfection devices. I’ve seen numerous presentations and read plenty of articles worrying about what the onset of AI and automation will do to our society. I’ve had plenty of concerns in that area, but these are tasks I’d happily hand over to machines. Even with the specter of possible Cylon-like uprisings, this would probably be worth the gamble.
But once it was all done, the whole week of meetings and appointments and kids and everything else just came crashing down, and so did it. Amelia was watching The New Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, and I flopped next to her on the couch, put in my earbuds and took the best nap I could in between Amelia’s snack requests and questions about Rocky and Bullwinkle. No matter how tired I am or how conscious I am, I am always willing to discuss Rocky and Bullwinkle.
The body has a way of reminding us of the obvious sometimes. We have a tendency to focus on the tasks of each day and keep on moving and don’t always recognize how much energy it saps from us along the way. We are living in especially exhausting times, where not only do the regular challenges of everyday life knock chunks off our battery levels, we also have the weight of a crazy, ever-changing world adding to it all.
While I picked up hints of my energy dipping over the past few days, the couch crash punctuated the fact that I need to catch my breath and plug in a little. Turns out a three-day weekend came at just the right time.
After a bit of a nap, I at least felt a little more charged to tackle the rest of the day. I got out in the backyard and played a little baseball with the kids. As mentioned yesterday, Henry has really gotten into wanting to hit the ball over the fence, so I’ve had to develop some extremely specific pitching skills to help facilitate that.
I also tried a new fish recipe at dinner and made some adjustments to my make-it-up-as-I-go risotto, and was rather pleased with the results. So we enjoyed a nice dinner of lemon butter garlic barramundi with mushroom asparagus risotto.
Erin and I sat outside, enjoyed a nice, peaceful dinner together. And after that, we both crashed pretty hard again. Did I mention it was a long and busy week? At one point, I had thought about staying up late and watching a movie or maybe having a cigar, but instead I wound up dead asleep by 11. Me of 15 years ago would have been so ashamed for the desecration of a Saturday in this way. Me of today? Loving it.
