It's a Two Cup of Coffee Day

The best thing about working for a public school district is the time you have off. Add it all up and you are employed for approximately 9 months out of each year. This downtime affords me the opportunity to catch up on reading, writing, bonding time with granddaughter, but most importantly naps. At my age, naps are now the most glorious thing about living, aside from a good cup of coffee and the rare night of sleeping without back pain—which I’ll celebrate by drinking more than one cup of coffee—keeping my bowels moving along quite regularly like today, thank you.

After the coffee does its trick, it’s time to go out and power walk, which inevitably leads to a nice power nap (after a shower and protein drink.) If it’s a rainy day, and I’m stuck in the house, a heaviness comes over me and I’ll nod off two or three times. My wife says I need to get out of the house more. Her getting out of the house more means fill-in shopping at one of our local supermarkets. You don’t know how much I detest walking into supermarkets just to keep busy. I’d rather be stuck in an elevator listing to Muzak with someone who just ate a meal slathered in curry.

My wife doesn’t work in the school system, which means she’s not off in the summer with me, unless she uses her PTO days, which are limited. My house is pretty quiet as we’re empty nesters, so this quiet can become disconcerting. I’m anxious until she comes home. 8 hours without an argument is a long time.

It seems my life is missing the tumult of kids running amok in my house. Then again, I don’t have to worry about the daily cleaning up of glitter, Play-Doh, crayons marks and food crumbs from the floor. The latter is when I wished we had a dog to be our own cheap vacuum. When my granddaughter comes over, her mess is fine since it’s not a daily occurrence in my house. She’s already done-in one of my shirts with paint, and you know what? She can do it again! I’m proud to wear that shirt even though it looks like a blood stain caused by an exit wound.

I’m thinking of doing some day trips to keep me occupied. I love going to the West Point museum, walking the Hudson River shoreline in Nyack, NY and schmoozing at the Palisades Mall in West Nyack, especially to browse the shelves of the huge Barnes and Noble store (I’m guaranteed to return home with books I don’t need.) The mall is the second largest mall in the country, behind the Mall of America in Minnesota, yet has an incredible large echo which I attribute to the plethora of empty retailers and lack of shoppers. In fact, I once passed gas in the food court and I could swear my wife heard it from the opposite end of the mall because I immediately received a text from her saying, “Did you hear that?” “Hear what?” was my response. When I met her in the car later, she said there was something familiar about that sound. I just bit my lip hard to prevent laughter.

A day like today has been good: rain held off which meant I could get in my power walk and power nap while also utilizing this quiet time constructively to write.

The other good thing is I’m able to pass gas without receiving a text.

THE END

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