A Special Treat

May 3, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I had a special treat today.

A friend and I went to a nearby town with more amenities than our town to do some shopping — nothing exciting, just groceries, slip-on shoes for quick trips outside, and a long-handled weed picker for each of us, as well as a new hose for me.

As nice as it was to stock up, to get a new tool, and to spend time with a friend, that wasn’t the “special treat” mentioned above. The treat? You’ll laugh, after all this buildup, at the mundane aspect of the treat. For the first time since this friend and I started going to “the big city,” as we call that town, I didn’t have to hurry up to put the groceries away and, exhausted, get ready for work. Instead, I got to leisurely stow the items I’d purchased, leisurely fix a meal, and leisurely read while eating. Or perhaps I mean leisurely eat while reading. Either way, the emphasis is on leisure.

Now that is a treat!

My work schedule was changed rather abruptly and quite unexpectedly — unexpected to me anyway. I’m sure the change was in the works for at least a couple of weeks. In fact, others in the community learned about the new schedule before I did, and they clued me in before my bosses told me, which was sort of unsettling because I’d taken the “clue” as simply a case of smalltown gossip.

But however I found out, and whatever my initial reactions, the truth is, my new schedule worked to my advantage today. My friend and I have had difficulty finding time to go shopping together since we worked different days, and different hours on those days, so we’ve been having to go in the morning on a day I had to work. Today was the first day we went on an excursion where neither of us had plans for the afternoon.

So nice! And yes, a special treat.

Come to think of it, the new schedule is also a special treat. Fewer hours, of course, but even better, fewer days. I like having more days off than I work, which hasn’t been the case the past months, and I’d been getting burned out. And if not burned out, then at least a bit charred.

It’s funny how when a person is used to working a certain day, and that day suddenly becomes a free day, it feels even freer, even like a . . . you guessed it! Like a special treat.

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