Easy Like Sunday Morning

For me, Sundays are always a day of mixed feelings and emotions. I wake up eagerly anticipating the Sunday morning paper. I love to catch all the misspellings over a hot cup of black coffee. Aside from checking to see what Kohl's is having on sale . . . . again . . . . I enjoy checking to see who's getting married--are they my former students? do they now have higher paying jobs than I? (Yes, that is the proper pronoun!!)

Then it's off to the pre-dawn workout, followed by two hours of tennis, which always puts me in a superior bad mood (but at least tennis racquets are relatively inexpensive to replace when you swing repeatedly at the ball and only seem to find the ground after three double faults in a row . . . at least the racquets I buy.)

Nothing puts me in a better mood after losing in straight tennis sets than coming home to two heaping baskets of clean, fresh-smelling laundry that is waiting for my skillful, adept hands to fold them. I'm still amazed how I can wear one outfit a day for a week and end up with 13 shirts, 10 pairs of shorts, and only three socks in the laundry each Sunday. My four-year-old daughter must change pajamas three times each evening. Who wears all this stuff and where am I at the time? At least my son is doing his part to conserve his underwear contribution to the mix.

But it's not that bad--while I'm folding the clothes, I'm listening to good music while my wife prepares her fabulous Sunday lunch. It's a small price to pay, but it's definitely worth it. Now, I was always told that whatever you do on Sunday (aside from rest) that it would come undone again on Monday, which is why I always have third helpings at Sunday lunch--then I finish my children's plate (it's kind of fun to eat off a spiderman plate with a plastic Dora the Explorer fork.) It never works, but it is fun to deceive one's self every once in a while.

After lunch, I'm putting my manual dexterity to good use again scrubbing pots, which naturally makes me very, very, very sleepy. Someone's got to set a good example for the kids, so I always model good nap behavior while I watch some NFL game through my eyelids.

When I finally wake, I always think it's Monday morning and that I'm late to work. Man, I hate that feeling! It doesn't help that my entire family is wearing different clothes than they had on at lunch.

Then it's time to devote sometime to the computer, who's been really neglected so far today. A little surfing here, a little emailing there, check the news, peek at craigslist, then send off that fantastically informative and brilliantly created Monday Mail document to parents and students that nobody reads.

Back in the living room with the family, we take in the sensationally funny "AFV: America's Funniest Videos" program. I pretend to laugh so much that I actually feel that I am a member of the studio audience. Family time is great.

It's leftovers for dinner, then pack lunches, get all five Monday outfits for each kid laid out, showers, brush teeth, bedtime stories, and then finally everyone falls asleep.

The late evening hours belong to me, and so I end the day much as I started it, alone, in the dark thinking quietly to myself how much I love my family and that darn AFV show.