…Not necessarily in that order.

As I mentioned on Sunday, yesterday’s plan involved driving north so that a son could spend his girlfriend’s birthday with her. This also would give me opportunity to visit my sick father, who although home from the hospital seems to have lost his voice (vocal chords not responding for some reason), and to connect with our drummer to give lend him the electronic drum gadget he’s been eager to use. It has also meant that the Monday workload got pushed into today atop the Tuesday workload, which is a lot of work.

The plan did not go entirely smoothly. I believe I got almost three hours of sleep by five in the morning, when the first to need to catch a bus was looking for his morning medicine, and then in somewhat disrupted and disjointed fashion pieced together my morning study and was on the road around quarter after seven. We grabbed breakfast at the gas station (which is not as bad as it sounds, since although Wawa has recently established a strong place in the retail gasoline market they are traditionally a deliconvenience store) and so reached the northern destination very shortly after ten.

Having fought for consciousness over the last leg of that journey, I locked the car and slept, fitfully with the CD player running, for about two hours. I then was unable to reach the drummer, who I think had not anticipated his wife and her Irish family monopolizing his time on St. Patrick’s Day–but my mother called, wondering why I was not already there, so I went there, ate lunch, and by around two was reading clippings cut for me.

Then, perhaps near three, I fell asleep again, and slept until my cell phone awoke me, my wife calling to see what arrangements I had made for several things she had expected me to address. Since it was by then almost six, my mother turned her attention to feeding me dinner and packing my car full of groceries. I still could not raise my drummer on the phone, I settled in to wait for someone to call.

The son called first–not the son for whose call I was waiting, but the son who hoped I would pick him up from his brother and bring him home for a few days. That was agreed, although the timeline was still uncertain. Then the anticipated son called, but to tell me that he was going to have dinner nearby before he was ready to go home. Then the drummer called, and the end of the stay up there was a somewhat awkward juggling of conflicting connections–but we made it.

The return trip put us in the driveway around two in the morning, if memory serves, and then there were some things that could not stay in the car overnight which had to be unpacked. My online work was limited to posting to the Corinthians list, and then I got to bed about an hour before I would be getting up again–but at least this time I correctly anticipated being able to return to bed after people were rousted and driven from the house. I think I’m reasonably rested at this point, but do not know whether I will be caught up by the end of the night or not.

To add to the confusion, my mother-in-law called. We just solved her banking problem so she can pay her bills, but now she has no stamps. Thus I have promised to bring her some tomorrow. Here’s hoping that’s not too disruptive.

–M. J. Young

Tomorrow is an anticipated disaster.  I’ve been tasked with dropping someone off three hours away by ten in the morning, which means I’ll be leaving here as soon after the boys are on their buses as I can manage, and then with bringing him home sometime after eight at night, which means I’ll be getting in around midnight.  This is not unreasonably because of a certain girlfriend’s birthday, and while I am in the neighborhood I am planning to visit my ailing faither (who is home now) and hoping to catch some time with my old and returning drummer.  I am not anticipating being able to do even the bare minimum of work here.

To compensate, I had planned to tear through a lot of tomorrow’s work today, tackling e-mail and getting everything in order so that I was on top of things, and then getting to bed early.  I did manage to take my mother-in-law shopping; but my wife had a meeting up that way, and so we went together, and one thing was added to another to another until it was very late, and I am very tired, and I will be lucky to manage today’s work today, unlikely to get to bed early, and probably not going to manage to get the things from the attic that I had promised to take with me when I went.  Well, maybe I can manage that part–but I’m pressing my luck as it is.

I’m constantly asked why I never plan to do the things that need to be done.  The reason is that my plans are irrelevant; whatever I plan, I can be pretty certain that that is not going to be done.

–M. J. Young

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