Sweet Freedom: I Can Almost Smell It From Here

Aw, for cryin’ out loud it’s only Tuesday and already I’m feeling the escapist pull of my lover.

Let us call him “Weekend”.

He calls to me in a tangy, salty accent. I can barely hear him over the sound of the steel drums I hear in my head whenever I’m overdue for a vacation, but I call back to him anyway.

What? Well of course! And yes! You know I love your guacamole. Just leave the bowl here, you can swing by and pick it up when you bring me another margarita…

I’m sorry. What now?

My Grandma once advised me: Get all your housework done in the morning so that if your friends want to go into town for lunch, you can join them.

And I remember thinking, can’t I just go anyway?

Well, no. No, you can’t – and I can see that now. It took years, of course, but I’ve been successfully molded into a responsible creature.

We’re the children of the pioneers, dammit! We raise our eyebrows in suspicion at those who “work” from home and who dare to be ill for more than two days in a row. What’s that? You lost the end of your finger in a kitchen accident? Did you try running it under the cold water? You did? What about wrapping it in a towel and hopping nervously from one foot to the other? Did you do that? You did? Shoot! If you can’t get the bleeding under control, you may end up having to see a doctor. Try rubbing some dirt into it again, see if that staunches the blood flow.

But this is no time to jest about one’s health. There’s a three-day weekend coming, and you’re gonna want to be healthy for it.

For those of you outside the US of A, Monday the 25th is Memorial Day, a day of quiet reflection and poetry reading.

Or drunken parking lot fights and the chance to star in new episodes of Cops.

Take your pick. We got all kinds.

In the meantime, you smell that breeze? That’s the smell of three-day freedom, and it’s just a couple of days off the horizon.

And it smells like margaritas and gardening.