Resisting the temptation to spend the day working turned out not to be so difficult after all. I got a rather nasty note from the Boss over the fax this morning, so I decided to check out for the day. The one thing I most wanted to get done would have required some input from him, and I didn’t especially want to talk to him if he was going to treat me that way. The way he treats everybody else. No thanks.

The temptation to leave the house was a little stronger, but I’m still suffering from the long night of tossing and turning before my phantom DMV test. That kind of a night takes more than a day to recover from, and now, in my sleep-weakened state I have to face the shortest night of the year, the night we set the clocks ahead an hour. That always takes more than a day to recover from, too. Often it takes more than a week.

Besides, leaving the house would have meant spending money, and we have this rule in our family that no one is allowed to buy anything for himself the week before his birthday. The things I would have liked to buy aren’t likely to be gift-wrapped for me by anyone I know, but I play by the rules. Besides, I didn’t want to run into any family members out shopping, just in case.

Anyway, the temptation to spend money on myself wasn’t as strong as the temptation to lavish my new grandniece with extravagant gifts. The trouble is, she won’t be born until September, so the incentive to do something right-now-today is less than compelling. I’m still getting my ideas together and trying to come up with something original. (In other words, not pink and/or purple newborn clothes, although I’ll probably buy some of those, too.)

I’m thinking maybe the Mulan DVD. Nobody else is going to get her that. Not until she’s five or six, anyway, and by then Disney will have taken it out of circulation. Yes, that’s a very tempting idea.

So I stayed home and watched basketball. I would have watched racing, but the race was rained out. I tried to watch the Giants game, but it was being televised with the A’s announcers, so it didn’t feel quite right. I would have watched a movie, but I’m still waiting for Finding Neverland, The Motorcycle Diaries and Spanglish to arrive from Netflix. So I watched basketball and read a Maeve Binchy book, the last one of hers (I think) that I haven’t already read. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, out of the way of temptation.