Best week ever

This is absolutely the best week of the year, every year, any year, with zero exceptions. EVER.
 
Yes, maybe somebody had a better week once, when they got married or promoted or had a kid or, more likely, when their kids finally moved out of the house, but that was once and this week is always.
 
Seriously, can it get any better than this? Even in a pandemic, the week between Christmas and the New Year rules bigtime. How is it best? Let us count the ways…

1. The year is shot, dead, kaput, with no way to salvage it. That’s particularly true this year, of course, but it’s the same deal even in the handful of years when there is no global pandemic. The best thing about the year being shot, dead and, also, kaput, is that the pressure is off, off and off. We can’t fix it, we can’t change it, so there are no demands on us to make it all better. With the right attitude, abandoning hope is actually very refreshing.
2. Nobody is working. Okay, the pizza delivery guy is working and the taco delivery guy and the grocery delivery guy and the nurses and the doctors and all the postal workers who are making up for all the packages that didn’t arrive by Christmas. But for the other 300 million of us, the e-mail alert isn’t pinging, and the Zoom schedulers aren’t scheduling. That means no clients are calling, no vendors need a credit check, and we don’t even need to go through the charade of pretending to work.
3. Christmas is over. Yes, I know a ton of people who consider Christmas the high point of their years, so there’s a little bit of a letdown at the end of the big day. But now everyone gets the best of Christmas—admiring the tree, playing with the presents, leftover goose—without all the cooking and cleaning and shopping and decorating. And relatives.
4. The bills aren’t due yet. Christmas is over, but the bills won’t be due for another 3-4 weeks. Everyone can pretend the gifts are paid for or that the Treasury Department will enter the wrong number and we’ll all get $2,000,000 stimulus checks. Yeah, that dream’s going to die in January, but it’s very much alive right now. It’s Schrodinger’s money.
5. There’s no place to go. In a normal year—remember those?—we get all our partying and visiting done by Christmas and then we zone out for a few days before NYE. This year is even better, because we have no New Year’s plans, either, so there's no reason to find a tailor to let out our pants after Thanksmas feasts. This week absolutely screams out for Cheetos, beef jerky, popcorn and day drinking.
6. Wasting time is a good thing. All year long, we’re exhorted to make the most of every minute, achieve new goals, soar with the eagles, live life to the fullest, yada yada malarkey. This week, we live like lions, sleeping 19 hours a day and getting up only to eat and have sex. 

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So let’s all waste every minute, savoring this week of limbo. Immerse your soul in its blessed emptiness, the hopelessness, the irreversible finality of it all. Even if the calendar doesn’t say it yet, the year is over and the normal demands of our lives are suspended. When a week offers up no demands, no pressure, and tons of day drinking, how can it not be the best week of the year?
 
And did I mention day drinking?
 
What’s the second best week of the year? Find out by subscribing to Dad Writes by clicking here and you’ll be the first to know.
 

  

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