I don’t know what day it is. Well, I do right NOW, I know it’s the 28th and it’s J’s birthday, but usually I don’t know what day it is or when I’m supposed to do stuff. You’d think this would be a problem, what with my working as a freelancer and all, but to make up for this mental deficency I do two things: One is working like a mofo until I’m done and the other is checking the calendar first thing when I sit down to work. The “To Do” list approach helps; I just figure everything is due now and act accordingly. I try really hard to finish everything well ahead of deadline because I don’t know when the deadline is. I mean, I know, I just don’t know, you know?
The day before yesterday I sat down with my plane ticket to see if I could select my seat online. It’s a good thing I did because I am NOT flying home tomorrow, on the 1st, nope. I’m flying home on Thursday, the 3rd. I’m sure that I booked that way intentionally so’s not to be flying out the day after J’s birthday, but I’d forgotten all about it until yesterday when I went online with my ticket sitting in front of me.
This is just like the time I left Florence a day early (what kind of idiot does that?) because there I was in Florence not knowing what day it is and the only place I was “supposed” to be was looking at that famous painting in that one gallery. You know the one. At least this time I discovered my date dyslexia before handing my ticket over at the check-in counter. When I left Florence, I’d been on the train a good two hours before anyone even asked to see my ticket. Man, was I mortified. It meant an extra night in Amsterdam, which is not, in principal a bad thing, but was also not what I had originally intended. I guess it gave me a little time to go look at that famous painting in that one gallery. You know the one.
Days fall in to two categories for me. They are either work days or non workdays. It doesn’t matter where they sit on the calendar. If I have work, it’s a work day and it doesn’t matter that it’s a Sunday. If I don’t have work, I can lie on the couch on a Tuesday afternoon reading my book as though it is a Saturday afternoon. I exist in a 24 hour window – what am I supposed to do today? Tomorrow? Okay, that’s it. It’s worse here when I reset my clock repeatedly so I can see what time it is where you are. Sometimes it’s still yesterday on my computer when it’s morning here and that messes things up even more in my already temporally challenged brain.
Further confusion is created by J’s short Fridays. Because he finishes at 11 on Friday, I often end up thinking that Saturday is Sunday because we’ve spent the afternoon skiing together, something we do when he’s not working. Unless he’s taken the afternoon off on, say, a Tuesday, in which case I end up thinking that Wednesday is Monday because he gets up and goes to work in the morning.
All this is a complicated way of saying I have an additional 48 hours here. I was hoping to use it to play in the snow, but we’ve got the Norwegian Blast, meaning there’s a bitter cold arctic wind coming from the land of the reindeer. The high today is supposed to be -9C but the wind makes it feel a lot colder. The shift in the weather started yesterday with a blast of snow and, later that afternoon the wind started. The snow is so fine now that it looks like dust. Playing outside seems unlikely.
J is going to come home early today – he’s taking a half day because it’s his birthday – and we’re going to go shopping. This means that tomorrow will seem like Monday again. Regardless, I’m flying home on March 3rd, which is a Thursday. I leave Amsterdam at 1130 and, through the miracle of time zones, I arrive at 1230 on the same day! I could conclude that chronologically, I will only have wasted one hour in the airplane because upon arrival in Seattle, I get 8 of the 9 hours back to use again in the manner I see fit. I predict that we will be going for a big bowl of noodles in the I-district on the way home from the airport. Then I’ll call J, who will be heading off to bed in what will look to me like the wide open afternoon, even though in my body, it will so already feel like bedtime.
What time is it? What day is it? How the hell should I know!