All the libraries in the entire city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada are closed today! CLOSED. Not even abbreviated hours, but doors-locked-not-a-book-to-be-had kind of closed! I wanted to escape from my procrastinating-Freecell-playing self and saunter over to my favorite refuge of inspiration. But it’s CLOSED. It makes me sad. Yeah, I know it’s Sunday. Yeah, I know it’s the end of July when everything in Toronto seems to slow down to a crawling level of quietness that I can’t stand. It always makes me wonder if I’m the only person in this entire universe who has not left on some kind of vacation or planning to leave in the very near future. This thinking, predictably, brings on a poor-little-lonely-Annie cloud that can only be dissapated by being around other like souls. Thus the escape to the library where there’s always someone about.
But evidently, Never On Sunday — at least from June 23 until after Labor Day. Where do all the homeless guys go when the library is closed? They have to be somewhere. They’re obviously much more savvy about scouting out these spots than I am. I know, I could go join all the other silver-MacBook users in a cafe someplace. It would take care of the Freecell playing part of the procrastination because I never ever imbibe in game playing outside my own house. (I do have some control over that addiction — if not the others.) But I don’t want to go Starbuck-ing because I don’t want to spend any money. I promised myself I would get my budget under some kind of control — or maybe just start thinking realistically about having a budget. This ridiculous thinking became more of a necessity after the dentist uttered the words Root Canal and Crown last week. As soon as the syllables left his mouth I knew my frivolous spending ways had to be curtailed immediately and perhaps for the rest of my life. It seems so unfair to have to count trips to dentist as your summer vacation. (How can they charge so much!!!!????)
But, to be honest, even before library closings, I’ve always had problems with Sundays — which is perhaps why I should never leave blog writing for Sunday afternoon. I always feel out of synch with the day. This probably dates from my childhood when my father believed in respecting the Sabbath and that meant no running around buying things. Not that there were a lot of opportunities to do that since it was days of Blue Laws when stores were closed on Sunday. Or were they? Maybe I just thought they were closed since we didn’t go. But it was the quiet of the day that always got to me — that and the murmur of baseball games or football bouts on the TV. The boys ruled Sunday afternoon television programming — or is that a misplaced memory too? It’s hard to know. But I do remember that the quiet of Sunday always made me gloomy. (Although how quiet could it have been with 13 other people in the house?) What did I do? Was I such an unimaginative child that I couldn’t figure out something to entertain myself with? What were my other 11 siblings doing? Why wasn’t I reading a book or jumping rope or beating up on my little brother, Tom? (I might have been doing the latter just because a sister had to do something to protect herself from unrelenting teasing.) And why am I not doing something else on this Sunday?
The cats offer me no comfort or support for my Sunday blahs. They are doing exactly what my father used to do on those Sunday afternoons — taking a nap. They haven’t stirred since their mid-morning Greenie snacks and they’ll stay camotose until 5 o’clock feeding. How do they do that? When I lived in Spain I loved taking naps. Maybe because it was what folks did — but more likely it was because I drank red wine at lunch. But now, I just can’t do either — drink wine for lunch or take a nap. My mother survived raising all those kids on her fifteen minutes of sleep in the afternoon. Every day she’d say. “Kids, I’m closing my eyes. Don’t fight!” and instantly she’d be out. We learned to do quiet fighting very effectively.
So there’s only one thing to do. Finish this blog and go take a walk and join all the others who are still left in the city — and maybe even stop in one of those cafes.
Annie's Odyssey 