Man, I get cranky over weekends. I hate Sundays. I always have, as long as I can remember. I mean, Monday can be kind of a drag, but in my mind when all's said and done it's not really any worse than any other day, and in reality I usually welcome Monday as news that it is no longer Sunday. When I was a kid I had to go to church, which I was only intermittently a fan of (my parents might remember differently); TV programming usually sucked, and in any case the TV was often given over to football, baseball, or basketball, since Dad, Tim, and Ben were and/or are sports people. I did enjoy watching from time to time, although I don't think I cared about the sports so much as spending time with the family. Well, Dad, anyway. Tim and Ben and I tended to have these vicious circles of beating each other up; sports on TV may have acted as a somewhat pacifying medium as far as that goes, I'm not sure.
And there were books, always books. But there was and is something profoundly dull about the majority of Sundays. Some sort of jarring, unpleasant inconsistency: it's a school night with no school during the day. To the extent that I crave order and routine, maybe I find this offensive. So the day crawls, hour by painful hour, until finally it's bedtime and I'm not tired because nothing has happened; even when I go out and do stuff, it still feels like Sunday, with that insane weekend-but-not-weekend feeling pervading every attempt at self-amusement. It's really a day for doing yardwork and fixing things around the house, but I don't have a yard to speak of and the house is in fine shape, and even when I'm doing Standard-Issue Sunday Activities, it's still Sunday: slow and stupefied.
(I would like to point out here that Mom and Dad were right, and the three of us have grown to get along and enjoy each other's company, coincident with Tim's leaving home followed by Ben and I growing to about the same size where we could seriously damage each other. If your siblings have any redeeming value at all, I encourage keeping in touch: as Mary Schmich wrote, "Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future." And she's right. There's a great story about that "speech", if you've never heard it.)
I seem to get in a better mood when I get to go back to class--Sunday and Monday are the two days aikido is unavailable, and I've only once managed to roust myself with enough energy to make it to the 10 AM Saturday class. I've been going Fridays, though, to reduce the time I go without training (for both mental and physical health--four days off is too much, especially when your body is still adjusting to the exercise). I've promised myself I'll go this Saturday, since a black belt from another dojo is teaching while Kayla-Sensei is in Fresno, and Saturdays are pretty chill classes and a good way to start the day. Sensei is encouraging/gung-ho/gets a happy-evil smile on her face about me and Roger (another guy who's been training some amount of time longer than me) testing for 6th kyu sometime in November. I'm a little twitchy still about not being able to do rolls. I mean, I can (although my back rolls are super-goofy)--it just hurts like hell. So maybe if I just need to do a couple of them for the test it will be okay. I don't like having to sit that part out, especially because I like rolls: it's such a kick to fling yourself at the mat at high speeds and have it not hurt, almost as fun as high falls. But if I do it I'll just damage myself. At least I can do back falls, and I'm getting to be able to curve my back so I can actually roll backwards without thunking anything.
Mmm, bed.