The only better feeling than Friday at 5:00 (aka Done
O’Clock) is Thursday at 5:00 when Friday is a day off. I have loved Friday-Eve
since the long ago nights of my darkroom photography class in Worcester. Class ran until 10:00, and then a bunch of us would go out afterward and stay out too
late for a work night. But dang, it was worth every single rough Friday
morning. I haven’t had much of a Friday-Eve social life since leaving Tennessee
in 2013, but that hasn’t tarnished my love of it. And I extra-special double love
Friday-Eve on the cusp of Friday off. So
carefree, the promise of three days of leisure ahead.
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| No idea why this is the only wet spot in the entire yard. |
What I’ll do with three unscheduled days is anyone’s
guess. Or not. If the past 15 and 3/7 weeks (preceded by several years) are any
clue, I’ll lay about the house and drink coffee and watch Netflix and read and
periodically pounce on a minor household task. There are a couple homeowner
mysteries afoot, including the weird case of the front drainpipe. It rained yesterday
(at least, I think it was yesterday), and by this morning, everything I could
see was dry. Everything except under the mysterious drain pipe at the front
corner of the house and down the driveway, which has been wet all day and is
the only not dry spot of the whole yard. My best guess is something is blocking
the gutter or the drain, but I’m kind of nervous about going up there to check.
I wish I had a drone I could fly over my gutter to scope out the situation. The
folding ladder, which is also the only ladder I have, pretty much kicked my
arse the last time I had it out, and Neighbor Guy had to come over and wrangle
it out of the M shape I had it stuck in. So we’ll see.
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| See? High Valyrian and Klingon. |
One of the newest things on my schedule is my morning
language class. For real. For two mornings in a row at 7:00 I have done Duolingo classes because
they finally offer Finnish. I kid you not, they had High Valyrian and Klingon
before they offered Finnish, an actual language spoken in an actual, real world
country. I knew a few scattered words and phrases from Mummu, like “bad boy”
and “bad girl” and when I was a sulky teen and Mummu would tell me something
that I, in my adolescent teenage infinite wisdom already knew, I would say “I
know,” (usually with an eye roll) and she would say “that’s a Finnish girl’s
name” (spelled Aino) so I also knew one name for sure.
My new self-study program has revealed that the one full
phrase I thought I knew how to say and write in Finnish is at least half wrong,
and that “Hauska Joulua” actually means “Funny” Christmas not “Merry” Christmas
and now I feel really stupid for all those Christmas cards I wrote to my grandfather
and great-grandmother for however many years that I now know said “Funny Christmas.” I
can’t wait to learn what I thought meant “and Happy New Year” really means.
Hopefully, the Finnish lessons will go better than a
couple years ago when I tried to learn Spanish on the same app. I got the bright
idea to also brush up on French at the same time, which I spent four years in
high school “studying” and can only recite a couple weird dialogue phrases and barely
ask what time it is. But if you need someone to ask where Sylvie is or if somebody
knows Micheal, I can definitely help you, as long as Sylvie really is at the
pool and Michael is a handsome boy talking with Marie. Anyway, I thought I was
adding French to my lesson plan, but what happened was the languages changed
from English-Spanish to French-Spanish, leaving me wrestling with two
languages I didn’t understand. Good times. And I couldn’t change it back, even
after deleting and reinstalling the app. Finnish is working out so far and I’m
not planning to screw with any settings.
Kiitos! That means “thanks” and is me showing off.
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