Tag Archives: weekdays

Non-fiction

Just a Wednesday

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I wake up and bemoan at the fact that it’s just the middle of the week. It’s difficult to adjust after a short vacation, but now I work all five days. Next week will also be a full week, and then the next two weeks will be short weeks for my birthday. I just hope nothing disastrous happens today, tomorrow, or Friday to totally sabotage my weekend. And disaster usually does strike in some form from my job. I keep telling myself not to let whatever occurs bother me. It’s easy as a reminder.

I’m sitting in the coffee shop. They’ve installed a TV with a styrofoam sheet covering it for some reason. And there’s a green pen lying on the floor with a straw wrapper lying next to it. The old lady with her dog on the pink leash has walked in and found herself a table. The dog wags its tail quickly and snoops around for any crumbs. She wears a red top with honeycomb designs on it, white cotton pants, and pink running shoes. Her dog is hyperactive. Customers walk by and pet it.

There’s a newspaper on the table in the middle of the shop. I didn’t even think they had newspapers anymore, but someone apparently was reading it.

An email came yesterday from WordPress saying a new version is coming, and I would have to change my interface, or else my website won’t function properly. I don’t know what that means. The email instructed me on what to do, and I followed those instructions, just hoping for a positive outcome. The last thing I need is for this website to lose its functionality.

It’s almost seven in the morning. A long day is ahead of me. I have to field inbound calls for my job. Who knows what personality will be on the other end? I wish I didn’t have to do it, but I have to, so I have no choice.

Wednesdays, ugh. At least tomorrow is the street fair in Palm Springs. I wander through it after work and never buy anything. It’s usually trinkets and junk food: two things I can’t afford to have. But the street fair seems so far away.

It’s all based on perception. Time is different from perception. At one moment, time moves quickly, but at another moment, time moves slowly enough to where it freezes, and I stare at the clock, waiting for the next minute to pass.

Not much is happening at the beginning of June. Summer starts. Boredom sets in. It’s going to be a long, hot summer. Summer used to be something to look forward to when I was in school. Now, with work year-round, what else is there to look forward to but dinner?

I eat tacos every night. That’s all I know how to cook. I suppose I could cook a steak, but I need a grill for that, and my kitchen can’t fit one with all the other stuff in there.

Anyway, it’s just Wednesday, and I’m spent. Maybe I’ll rearrange my shoes in the closet.

Fiction

Thursdays

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It’s Thursday, which I favor every week. It’s only closer to another Friday. Otherwise, the weeks are wasted by my job. I won’t get into what I do. There are so many better ones. But am I qualified? I look at hiring websites, and I find the descriptions to be too complicated. Sans the joy I get from work, it brings me misery. The people yell at me.

Just yesterday, a caller asked if I was pulling pranks because of how incompetent I was. They’d poorly trained me. Now I’m stuck with what I have, which is a job with benefits and punishments. I take my sixty lashes for every minute that rolls by per hour, just waiting for the weekend to arrive. The hours go by so slow every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday gets here, and I see a glimmer. Not too much, but a little. Every Friday gives me half a day to work, so it allows me to go on errands and make appointments.

Anyway, I’m taking Thursday and Friday off this week because I’m going to a festival up north. You can’t imagine how relieved I am not to have to work, although I’ll be driving on the road for quite a while. I’m talking over six hours through heavy traffic through Los Angeles and up the grapevine. I say up because it’s north, but in reality, it’s down because it’s a steep descent.

Who can say how fun the festival will be? I hope the food is great. It’s a celebration for a Greek Orthodox church that has been around for a hundred years. They’re serving Greek food. And then I’ll meet with family, including my aunt and uncle whom I haven’t seen in years–a decade plus. I never was religious, but my family sure is, just not fanatically. My mother wants me to get dressed in a suit and tie. But I don’t have a suit and tie. I’ll have to buy them.

Tomorrow night, the family and I are going to a French Basque restaurant. It’s a custom in that town. I’m Greek, but part of my family is Basque. The restaurant serves bread, beans, soup, salsa, salad, spaghetti, and pickled tongue as part of the setup. And I’m supposed to eat it all. The best item on their menu is the fried chicken. You have to order it on your own, along with steak and pork chops. All I know is I’m going to eat a lot this weekend.

My mother said they won’t serve gyros at the festival. That’s a shame because it’s my favorite Greek food to eat. It looks like it will be just chicken and salad. The recipe for Greek chicken is as follows:

  • 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or thighs, if preferred)
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • Juice of 2 lemons
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons dried oregano (or 1 tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped)
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

I found that online. Don’t think that I knew it from the top of my head. I could never cook like that.

Another way to cook it is with:

  • 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
  • Lemon wedges
  • Feta cheese, crumbled
  • Kalamata olives

I would prefer it that way because of how much I love feta cheese (especially fire feta) and kalamata olives. I could eat those on their own.

But anyway, there will be dancing at the Greek festival. There’s always a guy who dances with a pint of beer on his head, and it never spills. I know this from experience because I used to go every year when I lived in that town.

The town used to be small, but now people commute to their jobs in Los Angeles from there because it’s much cheaper to live, although it’s two hours away. I couldn’t possibly live like that. I work remotely, and I’ve worked remotely ever since COVID, which was four years ago. I can’t see myself ever working in an office again. The co-workers were too much to bear. It’s better to be alone. When I lived in Los Angeles, it was an hourly commute to work. I lived in Hollywood and had to drive to Culver City during rush hour. That was two hours of my free time wasted in my car with traffic that wouldn’t move much often.

But just because it’s remote, it doesn’t make the job any better. As long as I have to use the phone, I’ll be miserable. Sometimes, I daydream about living as a nomad without a job, although Thursdays wouldn’t taste as sweet. They would be just another day.