I lost a big chunk of yesterday to return a son’s girlfriend to her distant home. I was shorted on sleep for it, and am not certain I fully caught up today. I was also behind on the work, since I spent the bulk of this evening doing the major part of my Tuesday work, the Lutheran forum.

I seem to be losing a couple days a week this way, and my wife wants me to put time into some other projects that need my attention, but I don’t seem to have the time. At the moment, though, I am concerned about next Monday. In fairness, it is the girl’s birthday, and a girlfriend has the right to expect a doting boyfriend to pull out at least some of the stops for her birthday. However, I’m wondering if they expect too much from me. He is hoping that I will drive him up, which I understand; in fact, his notion that I visit my hospitalized father is excellent, and I am already entertaining the notion of killing part of the day chatting with drummer John. However, he wants to be there by ten in the morning–which means I’ll be leaving here pretty shortly after putting the last student on the bus, as it’s two and a half hours if there’s no traffic, and we’ll be hitting the Philadelphia and New York metro morning rushes (an oxymoronic name for the time when no one can get anywhere fast). He then plans to be there until rather late–late enough that I am going to have to drive back the ninety minutes and pay the three or four dollars in tolls to get back to take my mother-in-law shopping, because there is no way that he will be back in time for me to reach her in time to get her to the store if I wait for him. I would then have to drive back to him, another ninety minutes and several dollars in tolls (plus we are needing gas money) so that I can bring him home again.

By the time I would be home, I would have lost the entire day and shorted myself on sleep for it.

I guess I need to find out what he’s going to do to make this possible for me. Somehow, though, I’m not optimistic.

–M. J. Young