FIGHTING FRIDAY FUNK

Returning to work after the summer break is always brutal.  I say it isn't, but then Friday night smacks me right in the face, and I know in my heart and in my brain that I am nothing more than a pathetic liar.

It starts after lunch on the very first Friday.  I suddenly notice that I have a splitting headache.  Seriously.  Not a little annoying one, not even a migraine; this headache is at retina-splitting levels.  I briefly wonder if I'm having a stroke, which I hope I'm not because I still have two classes to teach.  I pop Tylenol (super-heavy-duty, extra-aggressive, strength-of-an-Olympian, fastest-acting-on-the-planet Tylenol) and pray for relief.

I make it through the rest of the day, but by the time the bell rings to release the children for the weekend, I am ready to put my head in a drawer and leave it there until Monday.  I just want to go home and crawl into bed. But, I cannot.  I have errands to run.

First, I go deliver a bunch of goodies to my invalid sister.  Thankfully, she didn't ask for a laundry list of stuff when I visited yesterday, and I know she won't be there when I pop in today, so I dump the stuff and run, run, run as fast as I can with my head down so no one notices me and engages me in conversation. 

Then I remember that my fridge is sort of on the blink.  It has been running at less than optimal temperatures since the four days that I was away at the wedding and the house got to about a thousand degrees while I was gone.  I turned the fridge and freezer temperature way up, but I'm a little worried that it's time to invest in a new fridge.  I buy some beer anyway because I have a cooler and ice, so I can totally make this happen.

The car needs gas, so I stop and throw $20 worth in, then I have to go to the light and turn around in the plaza or else I'll be sitting trying to cross four lanes of traffic.  Oh, yeah, and I might as well stop at Whole Foods and get something healthy for dinner because I have a gift card ... an old gift card ... the kind that apparently doesn't work anymore, so I have to get a manager and change registers just to check out.

I finally arrive home ninety minutes after leaving work, still indulging a brain-bleed of a headache.  I put the beer on ice in a small cooler and decide that I should probably give it about an hour before the beer is as icy as I really want it.  Meantime, I open the fridge to check the temperature.

Damnation ... but, also, YAY.

Sometime between this morning and this very moment, the fridge decided to work again, and much of the shit inside is frozen.  This is bad for the waters on the top shelf, but fabulous for the cans of beer on the bottom shelf because they are beyond ice cold yet not iced over, so I decide to have one of those while I wait for the bottles that I bought and put on ice to get cold enough.

This is a mistake.  A bad, bad, bad mistake.

By five o'clock in the evening, I am starting to consider going to bed.  Yup, this is exactly what the First Friday of School looks like: Bedtime beats sundown.  My waning headache is not the biggest struggle I have right now; my biggest struggle is keeping my eyelids open.  However, five o'clock is not an acceptable Friday evening wrap-up hour unless I am a toddler or an elderly person.  Since I am neither, I force myself to stay awake.

I do some work, I play some games, I answer some emails, I text with friends, I watch television, and I have a beer from the cooler.  I do anything and everything I can to maximize my evening and the start of my weekend.  Certainly by now it is a respectable bedtime, right?  No, it's only six-thirty.  I repeat my activities in just about the same order, including the confident delusion that it must be time to go to bed because the sun has pretty much set.  This time when I check, it's barely seven-forty-five.

Finally, I make it to nine-thirty, an absolutely acceptable time to call it a night.  By the time I'm done putzing around and turning down the bed and all, it's ten-fifteen.  I put my head down on the pillow and then I don't remember a damn thing.  I get up a couple of times during the night, but then I'm out again.

I sleep ten hours.  Ten damn hours of my life, of my weekend, gone just like that.  When I finally roll out of bed, my headache has dissipated, and I feel a little sluggish.  I spend a few hours doing work I was too tired to do the night before, then I go about my day, hoping I don't look any worse for the wear of my first week of being back at school and being on my feet teaching.

It's going to be another long year, folks, and now you know why teachers hate Friday nights: Zombieland.  Yes, we are all zombies by the end of the week.  It's all good as long as you don't steal the beer out of my cooler because, even if I doze off, I'll be looking for it Saturday when my senses return.