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This week I traded in my usual Saturday for a kind of a half-Wednesday. It wasn't as intense as a Monday, but it made the euphoria of a Friday night seem wasted and stale. And it might be like this for the next few weekends, because there's so much to do to get ready to be gone for ten days.
Today was special, though, because the big check I've been moaning about finally arrived. In fact, while I was at the post office picking it up, one of the company's creditors left a message on my answering machine. I called him back and told him he could deposit the check I asked him to hold. I said I'd be depositing the funds to cover it first thing Monday.
"You mean I can't go to my bank today?" he whined. "I was hoping I could take the check down there right now." The check I sent him wasn't even for the same job we just got paid on. It's for one we won't be able to collect on for at least a month. In other words, what we're really doing is advancing him eleven thousand dollars, and he can't wait a day and a half.
I gave him the okay. I'm pretty sure the check will be covered by the time it hits our bank anyway, and even if it isn't, we'll absorb the overdraft fee. Our bank has been trained to pay checks even if we're short of funds, because otherwise they face my mighty wrath. Nobody wants to see that.
I suppose I could have taken the big check to our bank today. I had time, and since the branch I use is in a supermarket, I know it would have been open. But I didn't feel like it. Besides, I spent the rest of the day using that money to write more checks, paying off everyone we owe from it and a few more bills besides.
Dutifully (and grumpily), I worked all afternoon and straight through the first seven innings of the first game of the World Series. I think that's devotion above and beyond, and I don't care to hear any contrary opinion on that subject. Or any other subject. Ever. But that's another matter entirely. | 
