Sometimes, you just gotta stick on some Ozzy (Thoughts helped along by military grade flashlights and Simon in two pairs of underpants)

Relaxing and rejuvenating, yet wildly productive, is what I look for in my days off. Some months back, someone asked me a question that is seldom actually framed. It’s something that dominates our thoughts, just not put to a simple and straightforward question such as this man put it to me. “What makes for a good two days off for you?” he asked.

Since the question is framed so seldom, I would have thought I’d have to think over it for a moment, but the answer came to me immediately. “A good weekend is when I don’t have to move the car.”

I pleased myself with my quick response, and I knew that I could wrack my brain for a long time and not come up with a better, truer answer. I don’t mind leaving the house; if something is going on–with the family in most cases–I’m fine to leave the house; I don’t create reasons to do so, however.

When I get home on Monday night, I’m pretty sure that I have everything I might need on my days off, and when I wake up on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings I just let myself go where I think I’m going to do my career the most good.

I want to post on here, but I don’t want to post too much, and just the living of life in the opening moments of the day and a couple of quick looks on the computer give me so many ideas about things to write. For instance, does somebody actually think I need a military grade flashlight? What do they think I’m up to? What wet work must they think I’m involving myself in to need a flashlight that casts a beam two nautical miles? I don’t even know how long a nautical mile is, and I’m wondering how nobody, in the length and breadth of a marketing campaign strong enough to get news of a military grade flashlight to me, thought to say, “Maybe we should convert that, so people will know how far we’re talking about?”

And what heavy work, indeed, could they think I’m doing to need a flashlight with aircraft aluminum housing? Are there people out there thinking how great it is that somebody finally came up with a durable flashlight because they’re tired of breaking mag lights? If there are, I want them with me in case a bar fight breaks out.

And then you have Simon…. If you were in our house this morning and you wondered why he was wearing two pairs of underpants–and nothing else of course; with Simon, sometimes we’re just lucky enough to get underwear–it was because the one pair was on inside out and backwards. Did he know why he had on a second pair of underpants, inside our and backwards? No. Did the one pair being on in such fashion create the need of the second pair? He couldn’t speak to that either; it seemed to be just what it was for him, and he had accepted it.

It was then that I realized what might be the greatest tragedy I face today, that I’m not a six year old with a six year old’s sense of the beautiful possibility and true magic of the world. Eh, wha’ya gonna do?

And it just rolls, and sometimes I just gotta put on some Ozzy and let him go. Sometimes nobody can help to carry the weight as well as Ozzy. Sometimes nothing can light the path ahead as well as my friendship with this music; it helps to fill in the outlines and contours of what I can expect from the day, and, while I don’t know how far in front of me that beam stretches, I’d say it has to be farther than two nautical miles. And I didn’t pay any amount starting at $29.95.

So I got that going for me, which is nice.

Much love, beautiful people. Happy Wednesday.