Weekends, UGH!

The weekend has finally arrived and I've looked forward to it all during the work week. That's the problem, though, the weekend has arrived and there's no more work week for two whole days.

Why do I call it a problem? For the same reason that kids complain but actually prefer their parents to enforce the rules. I need structure. We all need structure, and I don't mean the kind where every waking hour -- and a few of the sleeping ones -- on the weekend given over to filling the time with as many errands and chores and social engagements as possible, so as not to have to feel guilty about taking time off during the weekend. It's what I always called planning the fun out of life when I was married.

My ex-husband was one of those people who scheduled everything, including his bowel movements, same time every day. If he didn't have his morning bathroom time at the right time, his whole day, and thus his schedule, was thrown off and he was a real bear until he got back on track.

I'm more of a fly by the seat of my pants gal, in writing as in life, and I resent being told what to do and when to do it. I don't mind agreeing to a specific deadline or schedule, as long as I have some input in the process. I don't respond well to orders or demands, and don't even hit me with an ultimatum. That smile on my lips is not a good thing. Trust me. It is a promise of bad things to come.

And yet here I am complaining about the weekend when all I need to do is read, write, and loll about for two whole days. It's exhausting when you get right down to it and I just discovered I almost look forward to the work week so I know there will be a rhyme and reason to the daylight hours, and the nighttime, too. I can -- and often do -- get the urge to blow off work and loll around reading, writing, and sleeping on occasion, but that's only because I get burned out. But being forced (there's that word again) to loll around reading, writing, and sleeping is something else again.

Maybe it's not the lack of structure that bothers me but the idea that now I have to lollygag, as my grandmother would say, about. Yeah, that's it.

Okay, it doesn't make sense, but I don't have to make sense. I'm a writer. It's in the rules.