Summer of Becca
[George reads a letter]
George: Severance package…The Yankees are giving me three months full pay for doing nothing.
Jerry: They did it for three years. What’s another few months?
George: I’m really going to do something with these three months.
Jerry: Like what?
George: I’m gonna read a book. From beginning to end. In that order.
Jerry: I’ve always wanted to do that…
George: I’m gonna play frolf.
Jerry: You mean golf?
George: Frolf, frisbee golf, Jerry. Golf with a frisbee. This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin. I proclaim this: The Summer of George!
Hey, it’s the first full day of Summer! And the longest day of the year. Which gives me even more time to do not much of anything. Are you one of those people who wish there were more hours in the day and you dream about what you might do with extra time if only you had some? So was I! Then it happened. I lost my student job and am only taking one class for the first third of the summer. So you can only imagine the novels I’m reading (and writing!), the museums I’m visiting, the leisurely walks in the park.
George: Hey, ‘The White Shadow’ is on…
Jerry: Boy, you’re really packing it all in.
George: Jerry, my vacation just started. I need a day or two to decompress. Besides, I did plenty today.
Jerry: Like what?
George: I bought a new recliner with a fridge built right into it.
But like George Costanza, my actual Summer of Me has mostly involved sitting around wearing clothes you would not be seen outside in and watching a lot of TV. I’ve traded in his block of cheese, though, for Internet surfing.
George: All right, that’s enough. I gotta go home and take a nap.
Jerry: It’s 10:30 in the morning.
George: I tell you, I’m wiped.
Jerry: So, has the Summer of George already started or are you still decomposing?
George: Decompressing.
This has sort of happened to me too. If you’ve been reading this blog a long time and have a good memory (both of you) then you know that in periods of non-9to5, my sleep schedule edges slowly towards the nocturnal, with me finally ending up going to sleep at 4am and waking up at 2pm. But, you know, I never had a chance to see how far it could really go. Because my one class happens to be online and so I don’t really have to ever get up in the daytime barring the odd doctor’s appointment. Lately, I have begun to go to sleep at 9am and sleep all day. At first I tried to adjust this but then thought, eh, what’s the point?
This week I do have a few daytime appointments, though, plus Wimbledon is on from about 7am, so I need to be up through the early part of the day. Oh, and in July I have actual, physical, in person classes which begin at noon, so I’ll need to be awake at some sort of decent hour (for me). But it is hard to get back on track. I’ve tried alcohol and supplements and drugs of the legal variety. But my body is stubborn. So today, NO George naps in the middle of the day. Because I have found that if you are sleepy and there is no risk of your boss coming in and saying, “is that report finished? Wait, are you sleeping?” then you just tend to drift off for as long as you want.
Now, I realize that I am incredibly lucky to have this time in my life (even if the Yankees aren’t paying for it) and that while I was, in fact, chained to a desk, I was jealous of people strolling down the street with no particular place to go. It’s a temporary respite from life and I am insanely thankful to have it. Eventually, I will have a 9 to 5 and it will probably even be 7-4 which will be torture. And, let’s be frank, I’d love an income even more than I love sitting on my ass watching the fan spin because I can’t afford to turn the air conditioner on. But for now, I’m going to get up whenever I want, watch a lot of tennis, and taste the fruits. The cheaper fruits.
I like this one, Becca. I’d like a week off to ‘decompose’. But as you said, paying for my own AC, I have to go into work for free cool. Movies are just too expensive to go watch something mediocre for the AC, like people used to do before home AC was common. I’m just the opposite in body-clock, a total morning person. I can barely stay awake to hear the end of a ballgame, unless it’s a day game, and then I have to skip my afternoon nap to hear the start.
So, can you talk about Lady Gaga in the Yankees clubhouse in a bikini?
I love this post Becca. I love that you are up all night because that means a narrowing of the East Coast/West Coast discrepancy. I’ll make sure to check in with you more often to see if you’re up. I LOVE staying up past my regular bedtime. I’ve been staying up until 2 and 3 most days so far this summer. My husband thinks I’m crazy. But, I really enjoy it.
I love summer for the very reasons you have written about. It is human nature to want what we don’t have at the moment. Like you, when I’m working I want to be strolling outside. When I’m sitting around at home, I kind of miss being at work. Sometimes I wish I lived by myself so that I could sit around in ghastly outfits that no one else sees.
Enjoy your “Summer of Becca!”
That’s really the problem, Elena. It’s a catch-22. If I were working, I could afford AC. Of course, if I were working, I’d have AC during the day. Sometimes I go to the library but transportation costs something too. Also, I’d have to get off the sofa. Life is tough.
Re: Lady Gaga, I would prefer to keep on pretending she doesn’t exist. Like this: Lady who?
Tam, I am seriously up most of the night. Check in with me any time! Except for tonight when I need to go to sleep right after the game (like 1am).
I have never been a summer person, well, never as an adult, but I could see that changing.
Oh wait! I do have something to say about lady Gaga! Actually, David Letterman said it but it’s hi-larious:
So, what is it with Lady Gaga? Is she going to go from stadium to stadium now? Humiliating herself? She’s like the Orioles now.
Rimshot!
Ooooh, that’s a good one, David!
That getting up off the sofa part is always the deal breaker. The only thing that got me out of bed for my first day at work after vacation was the promise of AC and the quarterly all-staff coffee break with Krispy Kremes.
I learned in Psychology class that the evolutionary reason for human waste is that without having the need to go to the bathroom, we’d never get up. They never mentioned that in any of my science classes but I still believe it.
Makes sense to me.