“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 955 (Friday) – halloween weekend eve

Bettie Page, 2008.

The week was busy and flew past like a Halloween image of a witch on a broom. Not a cute and sexy witch on a broom like Samantha on Bewitched, but more like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Meaning, it went by fast, but it was stressful and not exactly always pleasant, with minimal comedic moments.

At least a dozen times I wished a house would fall on me, because the odds seemed a lot better than the “Calgon take me away” allegedly relaxing bull crap produced by some major New York City ad agency and broadcast on TV way back when. 

There were at least 100 times that I tried to remind myself I get paid the same amount of money whether I am cool as a cucumber or a ball of stress. It did not work. Stress prevailed.

I wobbled and teetered on the edge a lot. But at least now it’s over. Until Monday anyway. Or more exactly, Tuesday, because Monday is booked as a vacation day, which I totally forgot about until in the car on the way home. I hadn’t set my out of office message or taken my handwritten “Weekly to-Do” notepad with me or anything else I might need or want for working remotely on Tuesday. There may have been some colorful language, but I was alone in the car, so it's all ok.

Prince, 2019.

And the vacation day, as usual, isn’t even for anything fun. It’s for yet another medical appointment in the morning of a day where I would be going in early to leave early for Finnish language class in a season where I need to use vacation time before year end. So yes, vacation day, You have no idea how much I wish I could say I was attending some sort of Halloween witch convention or something else interesting and exciting. But nope. Not at all.

As for the weekend, there are exactly zero costume parties on the calendar. Once upon a time, Halloween weekend meant parties at bars, or houses, or garages attached to houses. There were costumes including Prince, (twice) a disco queen, Groucho Marx, Bettie Page (twice), a Cowboy, Red Riding Hood (thrice), a mermaid (twice), and more. Not this year. This year, the "costume" is stressed out hermit witch alone in the lair with the company of her decrepit dog.

For the past few years since the great disruption of the pandemic, Halloween weekend is just another weekend in normal attire. Dressing up in a costume to sit on the couch alone and watch TV would just be weird, even by my flexible standards. Maybe I should wear a costume to the appointment on Monday.