Another Day Off?! And Other Holiday Musings

That's the great thing about long holidays where Monday is the extra day off.  Usually I am sort-of sad that the weekend is over, and you face the oblivion of the week.  But all day today I knew that as the sun went down on Sunday, I had another day off!  I don't have to face that Debby Downer feeling of, "Ugh, back to the grind" till tomorrow!

You don't really get that feeling of a short week when your holiday falls on a Friday.  Of course it's still a long weekend.  But when Friday's the day off, you still have the slog of going in on Monday and starting the workweek like you start every other workweek.  When you don't have to go in until Tuesday, there's that "staying out late on a school night" feeling, as if you're stealing time.  That's a different feeling, and right now, it feels better than taking Friday off.  Then again, I may be saying that as someone who until recently made up for working Sundays by regularly taking off Friday afternoons, so that feeling, while great, is very familiar.

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Don't know if I've talked about this before on Wailing And Failing, and I hope I haven't.  When it comes to the holidays, by which I mean the big ones, the heavy lifting is over.  You get New Year's Day off to start off the year, but you get a series of minor ones, most of which you don't get off (Valentine's, President's, St. Patrick's, Easter), until right not, Memorial Weekend.  If you're not lucky enough to have paid time off, that's five straight months off without mandatory holidays.

Here on out, though, the Big Holidays are coming with increased regularity.  It's the summer, which puts many in the holiday mood, plus you've got Independence Day coming in about six weeks.  There are two months after that, but that includes August, The Only Month Without Any Holiday, so time kind of stops existing, plus there's the Minnesota State Fair, which should be back and back to normal this year, thank Buddha.  Then there's Labor Day and, while there is a three-month stretch between that and Thanksgiving, Halloween seems, in my mind, getting bigger and more anticipated through October, so that makes things lighter.  (Football season also makes time pass quickly, too.)  Finally, December, or really the sprint between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is one whole holiday season, and people kind of half-heartedly work throughout that four-week period anyway.  And then there's that weird but OK week between Christmas and New Year's where time really doesn't exist; in fact, anything you do during that week doesn't seem to "count," if that makes sense, and if it doesn't, no matter.

So cheer up!  The longest part of the year is over!  And be happy that we have one more weekend day!