The unreality of Sundays

I worked a seventeen-day stretch in July. No full days on my days off, never more than five scheduled hours, but still, I was in my seat and working every one of those days. After a single day off, I stretched this to nineteen out of twenty days. And then I stopped.

Last Friday and Saturday were my first "weekend" since July 8. My schedule has me work three ten-hour days, take two days off, work one more ten-hour day, and then take another day off. I realized how much I missed weekends, two days of knowing you didn't have to worry about going to go to work the next day.

I also realized how much I enjoyed that third day off, which (for me) is Monday. (Lots of people where I work have similar schedules, with different days on and off.) Last Monday I had an appointment with my eye doctor. Then I went shopping for perfume for my sister's birthday and a specific type of fudge (Boscov's maple walnut) for my mom. As I was driving around it hit me how much I had missed having the freedom to go on these jaunts.

Sundays are special days for me at work. They have this air of unreality: I have just been off two days, and I will be off again tomorrow. The calls are just as fast and the callers just as demanding as on any other day, and sometimes moreso. But I know that at the end of the day I get to go home, and won't have to be back until Tuesday. This somehow lightens the burden of the day and makes it easier to deal with people, whatever their demands.

I'm going to miss all this when it all wraps up at the end of September. There are a lot of things I will miss, and it seems odd that this confusing, exhausting schedule will be one of them. But it is.