Familiar Friday Feeling

My roommate in grad school used to say that, every week, I acquired a 'Friday' look on my face. I would deny it hotly. You are happy, she would say. Baloney, I would retort. Friday nights found me, mostly semi-comatose on my couch. The one with the flower print on it that still gives me nightmares. If said roommate was free of her regular troubles at work, we would drive out and pick up some form of alcohol to sustain us through..well...life on a Friday night. I would use my last reserves of energy to cook up a meal. She would smile at me and give expert advice and then just give up and throw me out of the kitchen and cook it herself. So, mostly, I cut vegetables and did the dishes and did vaguely value-add activities such as wash the rice and set up the rice cooker. And then, it was the TV on Friends or Seinfeld or some such, semi- as I was saying, comatose, on the flower print couch.

Waiting.

Counting down.

Heart leaping at news of snow storms in various parts of country.

Friday was the day my main man drove up from parts south to mine. Thence the cooking (else I would have happily had a sumptuous meal of local brewed beer and curd rice with a whole lot of mango pickle, thank you very much). Somehow if someone was braving Friday night traffic, and snow, and the tiredness of an entire week, for my sake, I felt like some effort ought to be made to feed said person. My roommate, on the other hand, just liked cooking. A lot. It relaxes me, she would say.

Anyway this arrangement, strange as it was, lasted a year. Or was it two. Then she graduated. I moved to my own place. A spectacular little studio apartment. I took the couch. I had a two-burner electric stove and the world's smallest refrigerator (with built-in freezer). I really don't know how I managed to whip up dinner for the extra large person that the main man is on that baby-sized set-up in my uber-cramped digs. But I think, for the most part I did. Then passed out on couch.

Waiting.

Watching news reports of snow storms.

Wondering whether I should try to go down and buy some chips.

I have tried many times to analyse my Friday state. Many a week it is a nice kind of tiredness. Like, look, the week is done. I have squeezed what I can out of it. I deserve the weekend, somewhat. Its been very rare that I work significantly over the weekend. If you want tips on How To Survive Life Without Working Weekends, I can tell you, truly. But on many a friday, its a bad kind of tiredness, of late. Like, oh! Where did the week go? How can I manage to break my own rule and get some work done over the next couple of days? Can I cancel my travel plans and just sit here and finish this thing that I really want to? No? Oh but why am I so very very tired?

Of late, there are additional legs and arms to my Fridays. I do lie in wait once in a while for the husband. Even when he is in the same city. Obviously, he works much longer hours than I do (I can argue till I am blue in the face that that means he is less efficient, but hey, the truth's out there) so this makes sense. I wait to open the (nasty, evil tasmac derived) beer so that its cold enough for him. In Mumbai I would call my trusted guy to home deliver some cold 'uns (yumm). If he (husband, not the alc. delivery guy) is travelling and not going to be back till much later, I suck it up and deal with it. I don't get that woebegone look like I would have a few years ago (many years ago, I guess). Grow up Kenny. Go surf the web, for Pete's sake. Or Paul's.

The monster has her own Friday Feelings. She is usually very tired and cranky and generally impossible to deal with. Which in a way is cool because it focuses me and keeps me away from building up lonesomeness and other crap feelings in my own head. Sometimes it also serves to drive me rather quickly to alcohol, but as wise people say, whats good for the soul is good for the body, so if it works, it works. The flower couch has been long gone (Aside here: After a long and fervent search for a comfortable couch last year, I came back home one fine day, sat on ours and said, this is the most comfortable couch in this country. So, twenty points, beige couch of mine). The TV is not an option. Four words mothers across the country can relate to: "Oggy and the cockroaches." The monster and I try to keep each other sane on Fridays by listening to music and hanging out reading.

Saturday mornings are long run mornings. We have stuck to the schedule well in 2010. So that is something really positive. I totally look forward to a long therapeutic run on Saturday mornings. I think about it on Friday nights. It keeps those things at bay. Those negative crappy feelings that are part of my Friday make-up, despite the look of happiness at finally reuniting with love of my life albeit for two days that she would accuse me of, all those years ago in grad school.

Today, after a long time, I have that familiar feeling. I am remembering my roommates statements. I feel sad and miss those days, carefree ones they seem to me. Sleep late, wake up late, play basketball, eat a ton of eggs for breakfast, chores, movies, gosh, the weekend seemed so long. We lived our life together over the weekend. And I went back to my desi grad student avatar bright and early on Monday mornings. Now I can already see Monday morning up ahead, and dammit, its only Friday night. Maybe its not so familiar after all. But there is definitely a whiff of that.

Today, I am just tired. Bone tired. Although I know it has been okay work-wise, I had a fair bit of fun with green and blue and pink sheets of paper. It has been a bad running week, I have only run 5 km so far, and been in pain much of the time. Its a nagging pain, not, I don't think, a real one, although I seem to have twisted my ankles at least four countable times in the past two days (the good part of that has been the discovery of self-adhesive crepe bandages in the homestead. They are awesome).

Oh go away now. Saturday morning still beckons. All I need to do now is pull through the next hour, which involves the most fun event of all: Monster's dinner. WhupDeeDoo. The event we've all been waiting for.

Thank /supreme power of choice/ its almost the end of Friday.