The Gown

Today is Day 6 of vacation week (yes, I count the weekends) and I am sitting here at 8:05 a.m. in my gown.  I've realized something really pertinent this week...and that is...that my gown apparently renders me incapable of productivity.  If I get up and put clothes on, I can clean house, make a grocery list, feed the dogs, prepare something to eat, make plans for my day, and actually execute them.  If I stay in my gown, I end up on the couch at mid-morning watching television, wondering where the dogs are, forgetting to do anything I've planned, and eating cake while watching something mindless like "The View" or reruns of Christmas movies that I've already seen fifteen times each since Thanksgiving because I'm too lazy to fix anything even remotely nutritious.

Never mind that I have people coming to my house at the end of the week, that I'm not supposed to eat sugar until 2012 or that I always whine about not having enough time to do anything...and now I do.  Forget that Christmas is two days away, that my laundry is piling up and will require a John Deere to excavate from my bedroom, or that the grocery store will resemble Times Square on New Years' Eve tomorrow before the sidewalks roll up at 7:00 throughout the world so that people can spend time with their families...so I need to get in there today if absolutely necessary.

In my world it is always absolutely necessary because I cannot seem to pull it together like a normal person.

Yeah, I don't want to forget about that stores closing early thing because I actually did that one year.  I suppose that this is so that the people working retail this Christmas don't snap and choke some woman who is whining because the store is out of boxes on Christmas Eve or that an item that has been sold out since November 15th isn't available in her size.  Never mind the men that think that no Christmas shopping whatsoever should occur before December 24th.

But if you really want a job that will make you contemplate violence...wrap gifts.

I should know about this, by the way.  I used to wrap Christmas presents at Belk when I was in college.  There's nothing that will wreck your holiday spirit like trying to be all festive and sunny when people are trying to get the twenty gifts that they spent $2 each for wrapped while the line is snaking into the parking lot.  Waiting in line transforms even the nicest person into a snarling wildebeast if they are left there long enough.  Heaven forbid you should run out of boxes.

I also had the misfortune of working with at least a couple of people who truly had no business wrapping gifts whatsoever.  They didn't tuck their ends under.  Cut enough paper to wrap two gifts and then had to reconfigure each gift in such a way that it took four times longer to slap paper on the box than it should.  Folks that talked the entire time...but found that when their mouth was moving...their hands apparently couldn't.  People who moved slower than molasses because they'd apparently never spent time on the counter at McDonald's when a bus would pull in.  Oh yeah, I have that on my resume too.

This particular employment stint at Belk's had the added bonus of having to be Mrs. Claus several times a week while kids came to have their pictures made with Santa.  This involved dressing in a short red dress with fur trim and a Santa hat.  "Precious" would be an understatement.  Frankly, right now I actually look more like Mrs. Claus than I care to reflect upon right now and would kill to have those thighs back.  Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.

Anyway...back to the gown.

I'm going to get up and change in a minute and am going to try to snap myself out of it before my kids get up.  That means that I have until approximately noon today.  My big "sleeping in" this week has been until about 7:30...which...if you know me...is scandalous.  I'm usually up at 6:00 every morning whether I have to be or not.  Frankly, I like being up after Big Dave goes to work and before they get up so that the house is quiet and I can have some "me" time.  With the kids home, as much as I love them, this has become more of a necessity than I thought was possible. 

So, here I go to get away from whatever kryptonite forms the threads of this gown that keeps productivity at bay.  I'll make yet another to-do list...and then whatever doesn't get done today...just doesn't get done.  Except for cleaning the bathrooms and doing some laundry.  That has to get done whether the curse of the gown wins out or not.

Wish me luck.