Otherwise entitled: I Keep Forgetting What Day it Is.
Driving home through unusually light traffic tonight I realized, halfway home, that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. For someone who works for a retail company centered around food, this is not how it should be. I should have, beating in my heart and tattooed on the inside of my eyeballs, every food-based holiday and a countdown to it. Instead I was one of the many last-minute shoppers at my local grocery store, which amazingly had all of the ingredients to make two pies, homemade cranberry sauce, and a gorgonzola-broccoli recipe I stole from my friend Cynful about five years ago.
My parents have the “Now What Day Is It Again?” syndrome but for drastically different reasons: the parents are retired. “Weekends” have no meaning if you don’t work during the “week”. My day-of-week forgetfulness comes from “I am going to survive this day” combined with a bit of work each weekend.
My kitchen was demolished on 30 September. The job to remodel it was to be completed 6 November, with a schedule that had a ton of spare space in it. As of today, my fridge is still in my garage, all of my kitchen gear is in boxes, I can’t park in my garage because of said fridge and other kitchen-cabinet boxes, and we are looking at “another week or so” of work. Most people can forgive any amount of stress or craziness at work to go to the solace that is their home, I do not have that solace. I go home to disorder and disruption, which for me is unnerving and quite possibly a form of slow torture. The best way to make a control freak cringe is to take absolutely everything away from their control and tell them there’s no way to get it back.
I will take the frenetic panic of working through the massive consumer glut that is the holiday season, and yes I too have a couple of wish lists out there; I will take the increasing tempo of schoolwork for the boychild, I will take the slow creep of the scale that necessitates increased workouts, I will take the eternal guilt I get at this season for not being able to do more, to provide more, to be more.
It’s just another week until I get my kitchen back.
Bobbie Conti 