T.G.I...???

I had the weirdest feeling when I got to work this morning that I was underdressed. The agency policy on Casual Friday hasn’t changed or anything; I think it was more that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the fact that it was, truly, Friday. It took me a moment to sort through it, but eventually I realized that last Friday I had to take a sick day to stay home with the little girl, and the Friday before that I was out on my own medical leave, and the Friday before that … I think I was here, but clearly three weeks ago is way too far in the past for me to remember with absolute clarity. But the upshot is that I am out of practice getting dressed for the office on Fridays at all.

I do often think of the Dilbert cartoon about how 40% of employee sick days fall on Friday or Monday resulting in three-day weekends for said employees. It seems like a lot of my sick days, particularly the ones necessitated by one of the kids having a fever that precludes daycare, come on Friday as well. Depending on when the kids start showing symptoms, we might be able to leverage the fact that my wife has a mid-week day off to take care of them, or we might be able to persuade my mother-in-law to come up and watch her grandkids (it doesn’t take much persuading), but eventually all of those options get used up and my wife absolutely has to go back to work, and I take over. But because that’s the order in which we tend to run through the options, my stint falls at or near the end of the week. I used to worry that my boss would think I was scamming three-day weekends, but he’s not pointy-haired, and he also doesn’t have kids, so generally when I start an e-mail to him with “Up half the night with a screaming feverish toddler …” I believe he just shudders and offers up a quick better-him-than-me and leaves it at that.

Anyway, I figure I’ve got five more Fridays, max, before the new baby comes and I take some extended time off. And I’ll work all five of those Fridays assuming everyone stays healthy, and the snow remains a psychological threat only, which are fairly big if’s. Then I’ll get all off-schedule and sleep-deprived and whatnot and who knows how I’ll pull my head back together. But these are what constitute zany adventures for me these days, so I will take it as it comes.