Ever wake up early Sunday morning and actually get your workout in before the spouse and kids are really up and at ‘em? And then come back to the house with a cup of coffee, the NY Times and all the excitement about how much you were going to get done that day because, after all, this was a Sunday when you had absolutely *nothing* planned?
No youth sports games on the docket. No birthday parties (uh, see below) on the calendar. No local family obligations. Nothing ahead but a free and clear Sunday. Man, this was gonna be awesome. Get some more stuff done around the house, get back ahead of the curve with various work things bouncing around in my email and in my head. I couldn’t remember the last Sunday that held this much promise.
But alas, like all well laid plans of mice and men…or something like that…this Sunday went off the rails pretty fast.
So, where was I? Oh yea, just getting back to my house — a 12 ouncer from Philz Coffee in one hand, the NYTimes firmly gripped by the other. I wasted no time getting the hot shower and clean clothes thing taken care of so that I could sink in to the living room couch with my java and paper when, sure enough, about three paragraphs in to the SundayBusiness NYTimes story about how the “organic foodies” have begun their latest assault on Big Farming (e.g. “we’re coming after you Mr. High Fructose Corn Syrup!”), there was a knock at the front door. It was our neighbor from across the street, informing us that they had moved the birthday party for her son from a Pacifica beach to their house across the street.
Damn! How did we forget to put that on the calendar?
Well, off I went to get a birthday gift so that we could waltz across the street to the party just as the rest of the gang was making it back from Pacifica. So much for the NYTimes today…another $5.43 (after tax) down the drain. Good thing I’m not stupid enough to actually subscibe to a newspaper that I never read anyway. Oh wait, that’s what I am doing with the Wall Street Journal!
Ok, so the birthday party that we pretty much spaced on — but got a fortuitous second chance to attend — turned out to be pretty cool. Our neighbors have a killer rooftop deck, the sun was warm (the wind was blocked out) and the vista of Noe Valley and the Mission districts were spectacular. Of course, getting a good look at the peeling paint on my house and what appears to be a warped roof weren’t the highlights of my view.
By about 1:45pm we all made it back across the street to our house. I was gearing up to get some work done. You know, organize the basement crap — I had visions of loading up our gas guzzler and making dual trips…one to the SF municpal dump and the other to the nearest Goodwill drop off center. I could unload so much of our junk today that the family feng shui index would sky rocket!
But no, this is where pre-existing project #2 that we forgot was on our schedule arrived. Turns out that my wife had agreed to sew together a bunch of costumes for our daughter’s 4th grade play. To make matters worse, one of my daughter’s friends came over to supposedly “help out”, though they didn’t really help with the costumes but instead a full on play date broke out and they did a splended job destroying the cleaning my wife and I had done upstairs earlier in the morning.
By this time I had all but given up on checking in on the NCAA Tournament games or doing anything else that could be described as relaxing. It was now 3:30pm, our dining room had a damn sewing machine sitting on it (who owns their own sewing machine these days?) and all kinds of fabric store stuff strewn around the room. That’s right about when our little one starts getting cabin fever. Bouncing a ball all over the house, whining to play the Wii, you name it.
Off I go on a mission to get her the hell out of the house so she can burn off whatever a 6 year old needs to burn off on a Sunday afternoon. On her bike she goes, me following her as we make our way towards the dog park with our baseball gloves and a t-ball baseball (the ones that look like a real baseball but are soft enough to not hurt a kid when they misjudge a pop fly and get smacked in the eye socket). Once at Duboce Park (the one that is typically full of dog shit), my daughter and I launch in to a good old fashioned game of catch. Watching her go through her mini wind up and then whip her body around with all she has to throw the ball 20 feet is a great sight. A visual I hope to never forget, especially the fact that none of her errant throws landed in a fresh dog turd.
By the time we finish our neighborhood jaunt — with a stop at the hardware store to pick up some things, including a camo designed mini flashlight for her, and then a stop by Peet’s Coffee for a steamed milk and a brownie bite — I realize that this Sunday isn’t so bad after all.
Sure, it’s not until about 9:30pm that my wife and I end up eating at the kitchen table, pouring through the piles of paper from the home office that we haven’t gone through and debating which summer camps the kids should do versus which family trips we should be taking. And then by the time I knock out a couple work related things I need to cross off the to-do list before Monday morning, I realize it’s just about 11:30pm. But I feel like I spent the day much more productively than I would have had it been just me, that cup of coffee and the NYTimes. Here’s to my next “nothing planned” Sunday!
Originally published on Medium on March 22, 2009. This Substack version is maintained as the canonical archive.