Precisely.

Home may be where the heart is but it’s no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.

I have been enjoying nibbling my way (by very uneven fits and starts) through Walker Percy’s Lost In the Cosmos. Though I had not necessarily expected to find help in The Last Self-Help Book, I have found much to recommend.

Which leads me to the conundrum of my ‘seventh-day malaise.’ For several months, maybe longer, I find myself every Saturday battling a funky fatigue. My doctor assures me there is nothing wrong with me beyond those afflictions which nag at me the other six good days of the week. My sleep hygiene may not be pristine, but it is also not so erratic as to make me need to sleep in huge chunks of time similar to the eating habits of a snake. But sleep is all I am motivated to do, ending the day by going to bed as early as possible so as to end the day and be fairly fresh for 7:30am Mass on Sunday morning, at which time the malaise has lifted and I am the usual me. Until the next Saturday.

When I must be away during the week - and for me a five hour work day has the makings of a large dose of ‘working mother guilt’ - I long for the comfort of home. But the first day of the week-end arrives and a cloud descends. Certain adjustments help, but don’t cure. If I can grab the Jeep for a few hours, there is always morning Mass, coffee with a friend etc. but then I am drawn home by my own longing. Only to find the lure of the couch, bed or comfy chair irresistible and another Saturday shot.

Yesterday turned out to be a mini-Saturday. Then I was back at work at 8:30 this morning feeling fine. I still feel fine, so I don’t think there is anything particularly toxic in my home. And those who spend more time here than I do are not slowly fading away. (Honestly, in the winter months I was wondering if the furnace was given off toxic fumes. You know, funes that affect me but not the other six or seven people, dogs and other living things.)

Re: Chapter 14 - Reentry problems of the Transcending Self...
The quiz at the end of the chapter (“checking those avenues of reentry which you find peculiarly, even compulsively attractive.”) is unnerving. But may hold some clues.

Life is good. I have nothing of monumental substance to kvetch about. But this week has been brutal. Like the evil opposite of a month with three pay days, this has been a week with two ‘Mondays,’ two ‘Fridays’ and, we can suppose, two ‘Saturdays.’