I really shouldn’t be tired but I am. Usually, I try to ignore the fatigue and carry on because Sal is such an Energizer Bunny-type, I feel I have to. She’s a slave driver by example. But lately even she has gotten a bit tired and, for one of the few times in her life, she slept in for an extra hour! Thank God! And so we stopped. And called it a day of rest. And it was good.

I am hoping this catches on.

Quite frankly, I could go for six days of rest and one day of work but I know that won’t fly. “That’s fine, honey. You can rest all you want to but I have to clean and paint the house and do the shopping and the logging and get it all done before my sister comes to visit on Sunday. So, I’ll just carry on!”

And not an ounce of sarcasm or tone when she says that. She means it. I am free to sit and watch her work. Except for one thing: I can’t just sit and watch her work!

She is a slave driver by example!

Mind you, my friend, John, who works harder than anyone I know (or ever want to know) said in passing the other day, “You guys have done a lot already this summer. You’ve accomplished quite a bit!” So, maybe we have been good. It is hard to tell. I am too delirious to know much about anything right now.

And all this brings me to my point – work is relative. I don’t quite know what it is relative to but I know that work is relative in the sense that context, circumstance and age and schedule and how many tasks are involved at any given time makes it relative.

It used to be that we both worked at a full-time job and then came home to raise a family and live our lives and do activities and watch TV and have a social life and we thought we were just normally busy. Now, we haul some logs and take a few breaks and think we are overly taxed. We wonder how in hell we did all that we used to do and now we can only just keep house and home together. It’s an age thing, I guess.

I remember asking my dad if he wanted to play golf in the coming week, “Hey, you wanna play golf sometime next week, dad?”

“Yeah! Great! Can’t Monday, tho. Getting my haircut. Tuesday is out. Picking up my dry cleaning. Wednesday I am seeing John for lunch and Thursday the cleaning lady comes in. ‘Course by Friday, I’ll be exhausted so how about the following Monday?”

I remember thinking that both Sally and I did the equivalent of all his weekly chores times five plus went to work and I could still squeeze in a round of golf. But I kept my mouth shut. Now I know what he was saying. He could only competently do a few things at a time now. And we are getting there ourselves.

Only wine and antiques get better with age.