Monday, Bloody Monday

I hate Mondays
And Wednesdays.
Sorry. I don’t really hate those days. That would mean I hate the programs I both run and help run. Years ago, when I ran a Wednesday “program” for a different job, I would go out for an adult beverage with a friend and co-worker simply to defrag. But now, I am alone. I am not complaining because I A) have no friends, nor B) have no man to call my own. A) I have friends, and B) I could care less whether I have a man or not. Let me clarify that I am not concerned with the drama involved in dating.

No, I complain because I have no one who is able and willing to have a beer with me following such programs. And I understand. I have one friend whom I called this evening for a beverage, but his wife was preparing dinner and was expecting him home. I was invited as well. This is all fine and I understand her position; yet, I was not in the mood for home civilization and drink, nor was I in the mood for said wife to be pessimistic over my life.

Warning: a Digression::
Said wife IS my best friend, however, I am internally pessimistic enough and do not always need her telling me everything else which is “wrong” in my life. Further more, she constantly insists on pointing out how my decisions will eventually hurt me or put me in grave debt. Now, her husband is also a good friend, is allowed to go to the bar with me (pending permission), and can be decent conversation. All in all, it is a good arrangement: we can have a beer while joking and harrassing life. I love them both. Yet, neither one can freely go out for a beverage with me at the local bar, because she hates going out, and he is not allowed without wife’s permission.

So, back to my rant. I like the idea of going out with a friend for a beverage on either a Monday or Wednesday night. Not both, per say, but either. And on such a givin night, when I feel the desire for a drink, I have no one I can call. Now, I do go out by myself quite a bit. The reason is not antisocal, it is more because my friends:
Do not like going out
Do not have permission to go out,
Are pregnant, and drinking is just not healthy
Have children at home

Thus the dilemma with my age range…either married with children or married with children on the way. Go them…and thank the goodness I am not in their shoes - but that is another story.

So when a Monday or Wednesday kill me, you will find me alone at the bar.

Often, I sit at work after program with parallel thoughts in my head, thinking I’d be just as happy going home, should I make it home, but a beer would be wonderful just the now. My thoughts revolve around the idea that I have just run programs involving either children or teenagers. I would not call it glorified babysitting in respect to my high schoolers, but then again…I do have three or four whom I would gladly charge their parents a fee. The post program outings do not involve drinking away the woes and stress of the evening. Rather, they involve reemerging myself into the world which I should call my own: the world of a “pushing 30” year old. I want to go out to the bar for a drink or two with friends my own age. People I can relate with. People who think the same way, live the same way, drink the same way as me.

Now do not get me wrong, I love my kids. I really do. But they are teenagers. They do not understand what it means to be an independant gal with three dogs and a house payment. They do not get the realities facing a single woman whose parents no longer foot the bills. (And bless mom and dad for that...) It becomes a twilight zone of teenage ideology when they believe it their mission to “hook” me up with a parental’s single friend. But they are lost in the whole high school drama defined by the latest movie or song geared at their generation. I am above that. Sure, I befriend their parents, but not as buddies I can call late at night with a blue mood looming and ice cream and wine taunting from the sidelines. Their parents are adult alies faced with the same goal of raising their kids to be the best they can be in a world set on pushing them the opposite direction.

Being a youth director can be a pain! It limits the friends circle. People my age are either scared off by my work or are so super immersed in the in the life of the "church" that they would never find themselves in the places I like to call “Cheers.”

Sometimes I think that to survive my age, I may need to find a new life.