Best (non)holiday ever
I never understood Presidents Day. I didn’t think anyone celebrated it past the fourth grade.
But government workers love it. Teachers love it. And furniture stores and other retailers, really love it.
I always wonder how the presidents we’re allegedly honoring would feel to know that their faces are blown up and associated with furniture or cars or a great deal on a dress.
Apparently, my company also treats this nonholiday as a holiday. Not sure why. I think they pick a couple of nonholidays at random as part of an agreement with employees.
For a second-class citizen copy editor such as myself, this means working the holiday. And nearly every holiday. Almost everyone else in the newsroom enjoys three-day weekends. And the rest of the building, happily gone, gone, gone.
So in return for working this so-called holiday, we get to work with a skeleton staff and cram all of our work into five hours. We have staggered shifts, so this means that one of the people I need to help me get my job done is here for a whole half-hour before he has to leave.
I really don’t mind the short days. It means I can come in late and leave fairly early. It breaks up the monotony as I rush to get done.
Happy holiday, I guess. At least I get my so-called holiday off later in the week, when it will do me more good.
This was my first official school holiday for Elliot (I’m still getting used to being a school mom), so we celebrated not by thinking about past presidents but by getting re-aquainted with a playdate friend we hadn’t seen in quite some time on account of their move to a $400,000 house (which may not sound like much to you Californians, but let me just say our beat up old Chevy Prizm looked pretty out of place in the neighborhood). Elliot had a good time with Bella and her little brother Michael who is now running everywhere, and I got to catch up with Leslie.
The only other memory I have of celebrating President’s day was when, as a child, my family went to a furniture store not to seriously consider buying furniture but to cash in on the free Hostess pies (cherry, in memory of George Washington). That was a good day indeed. For all their transfats, I always did like Hostess pies.