Stumbling Into Labor Day

I'm lap-topless again today.  I keep forgetting to put it into the car when heading home.  Home?  I mean back to my mother's.  But I think I'll be heading back to my own home soon.  It will be a difficult extraction, but it has to happen.  

Labor Day.  Most people I know have not labored for a very long time.  If it weren't for garbage pickup, I'd be completely at a loss to name the day of the week.  Such things are dangerous.  After watching commercial television with my mother for the past months, I am sure that I know why Alzheimer's is on the rise.  Hour after hour of the same television commercials.  I get angry.  My mother says she doesn't hear them, that she checks out.  Great practice for aging minds--checking out.  I am positive that a study could find a correlation between commercial t.v. watching and mental impairment.  People learn not to pay attention.  They just "check out."  

But without work and a vivid social life, it is hard to stay engaged.  Intellectually, I mean.  

But I know today is Labor Day.  My mother's neighbors have invited us over for hot dogs and hamburgers.  They have been very nice to my mother during her recovery, so it is impossible to say no.  But it is not a thing I look forward to.  In fact, I dread it.  But it is a duty and must be done.  

I've never enjoyed public holidays.  They have always been something that must be endured.  Today I will simply have to endure.  

I woke late today.  I don't know why.  I took no sleep aid.  And my sleep was not very pleasant at all.  My dreams were disturbing and my back and hips hurt.  But I would wake and fall back to sleep again and again.  I am hours behind.  

And so. . . I must away.  The day is. . . well, not calling, but passing, and I must stumble into it with all the gusto I can muster.  

Muster gusto?  Huh.