I know I’m always up and running at 11:00 pm, every night of the year, no matter what else is happening. That’s just a fact of my life, and I could probably say the same thing about midnight and 1:00 am, except that the later I go with this reality, the less people think of my character. I can understand that, because I have relatives who live in farming country. Life begins a little before dawn and ends a little before dusk, and 11:00 pm is a foreign concept.

But just because I’m up at 11:00 pm doesn’t mean I expect anyone else to be up at that hour. So I was surprised when Tammy called and asked me if I wanted to come over and watch the Survivor finale with them. I even reminded her that it wouldn’t end until 11:00 pm. They have babies in that house and don’t often voluntarily stay up late. They take their sleep whenever they can get it.

One of the reasons tonight was convenient for them to stay up was that Kylie had been awake most of the day and was in the middle of a long nap. So she was going to wake up some time during Survivor anyway, and they’d have to deal with that. And then there was the fact that this was the finale, the end of an entertaining season, and there would be little chance of maintaining the suspense long enough for them to watch a tape of the show.

After all, this show is our national communal campfire. It’s the only entertainment show I watch at the time it’s on, commercials and all. Everything else (other than live sporting events) I TiVo. So if we’re all going to be up, and everybody’s going to be talking about it tomorrow, why not watch it together? It hadn’t been a great day for me so far, so I gladly agreed to watch with them.

It was a good decision, because I’m sure I enjoyed it more watching with them than I would have alone, even though we had different favorites we wanted to win. Plus, I got to see Kylie and hold her for a minute, and I got a weepy, tired “bye, Uncle Mike” from Aiden when I left. (And I wasn’t even sure he knew I was there, since he spent most of the time sleeping and the rest hanging all over David.)

And it got me away from the work I had to do, and would have been tempted to spend my Sunday evening doing, but which will still be there tomorrow, whether I did it tonight or not. There’s never any shortage of work during the week, so there’s no compelling reason to “try to get it all done” on the weekend, even though I tell myself every weekend that’s what I’m going to do. I was saved from myself by the chance to share a bit of time with my family, although they don’t even know it.