Over here, they get out of school after dark in the winter. Now that it’s nearly summer and the days are longer, they can at least see the sun for a couple of hours before going to bed, but their days are eternal. But on Wednesdays they only have half days. That means that everything they can’t do all week while they’re in school must be crammed into Wednesday afternoons.
I asked to have one day a week off from work. I also asked that it not be a Wednesday. Of course, that’s what I got off. I suppose the person in charge of my schedule thought it was a mistake. Don’t all mothers in this country want Wednesdays off?
No! I don’t!
I want a real day off!
Besides, my children are teenagers. They would be perfectly happy spending their afternoons in front of the television and on MSN messenger without me pestering them to go outside and play.
“Play?” I can just hear my thirteen-year-old twin girls saying. “We aren’t children anymore.”
They are, of course, children and capable of spending hours out there creating gymnastics/dance routines or splashing in the pool, but they just can’t call that playing and I’d be laughed at for suggesting such an insane idea.
They do go out, however. They go out with friends to places I need to drive them to. Or they beg me to take them shopping. They also have all kinds of activities on Wednesdays, even if I wisely attempted to limit those.
I once thought this Wednesday thing would get better as they grew older, but it gets worse. Now that they are in high school and junior high school, they have odd schedules that allow them to get out early. One only has two hours of class, from eight to ten which means I have to wake up early too.
And, of course, I’m home, and I have “nothing else to do” according to my daughters and even my husband. So I get to drive everyone to all the places they have and want to go to, and then I get to do the grocery shopping and run errands that my husband (who works all day on Wednesdays and every other day of the week) doesn’t have time to do.
I get to make lunch for everyone too, and then clean up.
So Wednesdays are very convenient days for me to have off for everyone else but me.
It is nearly three in the afternoon and I have yet to find a moment alone to do anything that might coincide in some way with the ideology of “a day off.”
To get a real day off, I’d have to call in sick on some other day of the week. But in this country that would also mean I’d actually have to be sick as they don’t just take your word for it but expect you to furnish a document signed by a doctor ordering you to stay home. That would also mean that I’d actually have to stay home all day and I wouldn’t be able to do all those things I would like to do on a day off like shop or get my hair done. If I just stayed home, I’d end up cleaning, cooking, ironing and correcting papers all day so it’s really not worth it. I work less at work.
But I must remind myself that in just a few weeks, we’ll all be off on summer break. That sure sounds nice, doesn’t it? I picture myself lying out by the pool, flipping through a women’s magazine. But then, my realistic thoughts interfere with that fantasy. We’ll all be home. All day, every day. My children, oh sorry, teenagers, will want to go places. Or they’ll lounge around the house in pyjamas or wet bathing suits until Philippe and I put an end to their rituals by pulling the plug on every object equipped with a screen. My husband will want me to help him do things around the house and the yard. There will be three meals a day to prepare and three tables to clear…maybe next year I’ll get Thursdays off. Now that’s something to dream about.
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