It’s Thursday, and I have big plans for today.

First — and I’ve already done this — just sleep until I wake up. Set the mental alarm for “I don’t care.” Which worked terrifically until the upstairs phone rang with someone leaving a message about a doctor’s appointment for “Dye-treesh.” (I’m thinking that would be my son Dietrich, pronounced “Dee-trick.”) I don’t know when I last heard this particular phone ring, but I can say that when it awoke me I was in a confused state and scrambled all around for whichever of my portable electronic devices was making that sound.

Second — have whatever I want for breakfast. Those toxic GMO chemically premade frozen “pancakes” with chocolate bits welded into them? Sure. With three heart-clogging sausages on the side, please. And in my coffee, which I drink black these days, some chemicalized coffee-enhancing “creamer” from the refrigerator. Bye bye for today, Mediterranean-style breakfast.

Third — post on this blog. Done.

Fourth — take my family to the beach. I have big doings planned for that beach. They include: reading, building a sand castle, jumping into and out of the water, horsing around with my kids, allowing my wife’s Goldilocks-type comments about the beach to go unremarked upon (“It’s too hot” or “It’s too cold” or “It’s too bright” or “It’s overcast” or “It’s so crowded” or “Why is there nobody else here?” etc.), and more reading. Not on the list: checking email. Making notes (about ANYTHING, especially tasks that must be accomplished). I had offered to take my family to a water park today, but found out that precisely none of my family wants to go to a water park. Not the 48-year-old wife, not the 22-year-old, not the 15-year-old, and not the still-10-year-old. The latter in particular astonished me. “You don’t want to go to a water park? Ride those big long water slides at high speeds???? Plunge down dark tubes into deep pools of water? Really?” No, they all wanted to go to the beach.

Now, I really have nothing against the beach except this: I don’t like it. I don’t know what the big thrill is. There’s nothing to do there. Around where I grew up, in New Jersey, you can get gobbled alive by greenhead flies, which are the flying armored tank of the human-eating insect world. If we’d had these things under our command during World War II, millions of lives could have been spared, because no one — no one — wants to go up against greenhead flies. So we had those in New Jersey, but they don’t exist around here. If you’re not battling greenheads, then really there’s nothing to do at the beach. Well, except note all the things that you should’ve brought to the beach that you didn’t. And if you really needed those things, you should’ve just stayed where they are — i.e., at home. The reason you feel you need those things while you’re at the beach is simple: because there’s nothing to do at the beach. There’s only one thing you need for a water park: your wallet.

But, the beach is where my family wanted to go, so that’s where I’m taking them. And because there’s nothing to do at the beach, that’s essentially what I’m going to be doing: nothing. Which is a marked change from my usual schedule, so I’m grateful for the big plan of doing pretty much nothing.

Here they come. Time to pack up all the things we “need” for the beach.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 15th, 2013 at 9:33 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.