Dearest Rachel –
It’s a good thing that I no longer have to hew to a regular day-to-day schedule, because I keep losing my grip on what little I have of one. Then again, it’s entirely possible that it’s a matter of not clinging to one so tightly that leads to this situation in the first place.
This week, for instance, started out as a tabula rasa, a completely blank slate, with no commitments to differentiate one day from another. Oh, there are the weekly things that could be assumed from the outset – my walk with Lars, and dinner at the folks’ on Thursday evening – but the one isn’t during the workday by definition, and therefore doesn’t count, while the other hadn’t been settled upon, and thus hadn’t found its place in the upcoming week.
Slowly, however, things started to show up on my schedule, one day at a time. Sunday evening brought a call in from Lars, as he generally takes the time to check the weather forecast in order to determine the best day to be walking through the woods (let’s face it, he doesn’t appreciate a walk through the Fashion Mall any more than I do), and which works with his somewhat more cluttered schedule – although to claim his schedule is more cluttered than mine is to praise it with faint damns, as I’ve got next to nothing demanding my urgent attention.
In any event, the weather was looking the best for yesterday, although as it turned out, we did have a lot of mud to deal with on our usual route; between the snow melting and various forms of precipitation (and subsequent cloud cover) in the preceding days, one day of brilliant sunshine wasn’t enough to dry up the path we would normally take. Fortunately, there’s a secondary route that’s make for bicycles that’s paved, so we took that instead; it’s a little shorter, since it doesn’t meander quite as much as the footpath, but the round-trip section we walked still covered just under six and a half miles (see, that’s how it’s done, Falmouth)
But before we took that walk, I had gotten a note from one of the people I communicate with regarding the camp activity. She was checking in to see if I’d gotten an invitation to the discussion this morning about their budget for the remainder of the year. And it was a good thing she did, because as it happened, I hadn’t heard anything about this until she emailed me about it… and it was happening the following day. A good thing, too, that I have such a loose hold on my time, and don’t have so much that I need to drop in order to make it there. I did have to let the folks know I wouldn’t be in the office (well, I told them I wouldn’t be in during the morning, but after the meeting wrapped up, I concluded I’d dealt with enough work for the day in any event, and just headed home).
Long story short – too late, I know – it was a discussion about what expenses we could cut over the remaining couple of months’ in the fiscal year. After taking three hours of going through most of the line items with a fine-tooth comb, the conclusion was that… there really wasn’t much. Any savings in one place was going to wind up being absorbed by extra (and yet necessary) expenses in another. I can’t say it was a complete waste of time, since it established these things that might otherwise simply hung out there as theoreticals, but there’s something decidedly unsatisfying about taking a journey such as this, only to wind up back where you started, even if it was a necessary trip.
And then, there is tomorrow’s commitment that came up. After getting back from walking with Lars, I’d gotten a text message from a number I didn’t recognize (or more to the point, I haven’t given a label to). Since I don’t like red dots on my apps, I went to look at it rather than straight-up deleting it, and it’s a good thing I did – it turned out to be a message from my dentist, reminding me that I have an appointment tomorrow. Looks like I really need to label their number, so I know what’s up when next they text me. But in any event, that’s another morning spoken for that I wasn’t expecting.
I guess I should be thankful that each of these has shown up in my feed one at a time, on a daily basis; there have been no conflicts between each of them as they emerged, demanding my attention. But it is surprising to go from Monday morning, with nothing planned for throughout the week, to an entire week of things to do each day, all pulling me from a simple day of driving back and forth from home to the ‘office’ and back. Now, the only day with nothing special going on is Friday.
It would be a perfect day for Megumi to show up, if she was going to…
But until she does, maybe I could ask you to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck, as I’m likely to need it. Thanks, and we’ll talk later.
Letters to Rachel 