What Day Is It?

A few Saturdays ago I had a delightfully productive and social day. I started by chatting with a sister-in-law, segued into doing four loads of laundry, and interspersed that with texts, FaceTime, and more phone chats late into the evening. I went to bed feeling satisfied, fell into a deep sleep, and woke up on Monday morning. This was a particularly important Monday because at 11:30 I would be having perhaps the last phone appointment with my beloved psychiatrist who keeps me functioning by allowing me to maintain a cocktail of medication that Kaiser policy says will kill me. I exaggerate, of course, but I’m about to relocate to the land of who knows what kind of doctors I’ll find there. Thus, charting a course of action with my beloved psychiatrist was high on my priority list. I tidied, cleaned, made sure my vote-by-mail ballot was in my purse and the blanket for my therapist was in a bag by the back door. Then I whiled away a half hour by texting my kinda sorta daughter until I wrote, “Gotta go now. The doctor is about to call.” No call at 11:30. That’s not unusual. She often runs late because she’s busy keeping other people alive who have problems far worse than mine. I wait. I journal positive thoughts. I meditate. I make myself positively beatific until an hour had passed and I lapsed into my normal obsessive self and not only sent an email but also left a voice message about how perhaps I’d mistaken the date of the appointment and could we please reschedule. It seemed rather odd to me that none of the Kaiser offices were open that Monday. How do you take a day off in a huge medical center? But I accepted that their phone lines must be swamped; their website overwhelmed. We are, after all, living through a pandemic. Since phone connection was blocked, I thought I’d swing by the Kaiser center after I mailed my election ballot, so off in the car I went. Traffic was light, which was not too suspicious, pandemic and all, but I was surprised to see that the drive-through mail drop box was locked. Was this a postal holiday I didn’t know about? I flipped a U-turn out of the driveway and parked in their lot, donned my mask and disposable gloves, and prepared to take my ballot inside. The post office door was locked. Now that was truly surprising for a Monday mid-morning. As soon as I got back to my car, I checked Google to see what Federal holiday I was missing. Something about Columbus Day popped up but my iPhone calendar said nothing about it. That Calendar tells me when it’s Ramadan. Surely it would have a postal holiday, but no. Nothing special. Did the President die and everything shut down? Not according to the phone’s top stories. It was a mystery, yet I remained undeterred. I’d locate one of those advertised “Secure Ballot Drop Boxes.” That’s what I’d do. But first I’d swing by Kaiser to see if I could access the psychiatry department and leave a gift bag for my therapist with the receptionist. My doctor said that would be permitted. As I drove into the parking lot, I noticed a line of people, masked, standing 6 feet apart, waiting to be tested. Perhaps that was not a line I wanted to wait behind. But after turning the car around the line had vanished and I had an unimpeded access to the front door and the nurse/guard behind it. “My doctor said I could drop this parcel off in the mental health department.” I lifted the gift bag, wondering if it would have to go through an x-ray machine looking for bombs or pass by German Shepards trained to sniff out ricin. No. My bag was not questioned. That’s because the mental health department was closed. Really? We’re all going nuts here and the mental health department was closed? That’s okay, I told myself. I’ll try again later in the week. Back to my car I went, and off we tootled toward Arcadia City Hall. Google said the Ballot Box was located in the City Hall parking lot close to where the transit buses stop. I parked in the lot south of City Hall, the one I usually park in if I want to chat with a City Planner or drop into the Police Station to say hey. The only box in sight was the one that said “This is not a Mail Box.” So I started walking. It was a hot day, slightly windy, and very quiet. City Hall was locked up tighter than a drum. They apparently were celebrating the same holiday as the post office and medical wards. As I passed the front entrance I noticed what might be another parking lot, one I’d never bothered to notice before, one that abutted a tennis court. Somehow, it all made sense. Tennis court, City Hall, Police Station, Hospital, all in a row. Why not? Aha! There, at the far end of the parking lot, close to a street running parallel to the one I normally use, sat a large metal box. Striding toward it I could make out the word “Voter.” Once I reached my destination I could see that the structure was emblazoned with warnings about the dire consequences of tampering with this box. I didn’t want to tamper; I just wanted to figure out how to use it. Turns out that right above the door with the key is a little teensy tiny strip of metal and if you push on it you can force it to lift open just enough to barely squeeze a mail-in ballot envelope. I pushed and shoved and saw the last tip of the envelope disappear. Then I pressed my ear against the box to listen for the tell-tale sign of a letter falling. Sure enough, I heard a long whisper like wind through a cavern, followed by a satisfying thunk. Mine was surely the first ballot to be dropped into that particular voting box that Monday. Feeling victorious that one of my three goals had been accomplished, I headed for home. My forays had not been for naught and if Monday didn’t work, then by Thursday I could surely drop off the blanket for my therapist. Or mail it to her from Georgia. After sitting a bit, the phone told me my son was WhatsApping me from Georgia. I was particularly anxious to talk to him so I could wish him good luck on his first day of work, which he was starting the next day, on Tuesday. “Good luck on your first day of work tomorrow!” “I don’t start until Tuesday.” “I know. Tomorrow.” “Today is Sunday.” “No it’s not. It’s Monday.” My male relatives love punking me. My son was no doubt having a good time trying to confuse his mother. “It’s Sunday.” This time he said it in a disgusted tone, which is different than a punking tone. “Monday.” “Sunday.” “Wait a minute.” I swiped away WhatsApp and looked at the phone calendar icon. October 4, Sunday. “SON OF A BITCH!” Yes. That’s exactly what I said to him. “No wonder the post office and City Hall were closed.” My son is still laughing from hearing Ma curse. “I have to hang up now. I have emails and phone messages to leave asap so my doctor won’t think I’m nuts.” Of course, that’s why I go see her but she’s too polite to use that term. I hurriedly left messages and emails of apologies, praying they’d be seen by her nurse who would’t bother the doctor about them. Then I began to really doubt myself. Where had Sunday gone? Never during the entire day, not even once, did I consider such a thing as a Sunday existed. It was a blank, a void, an unheard of entity. There were no recollections, such as “Did I remember to refill the hummingbird feeder on Sunday?” No. Last week aliens practiced a secret weapon that wipes humans’ minds of all thought and they decided to eliminate Sunday for me as a test run. Alien implants was ever so much more soothing a notion than the sneaking suspicion I might be entering onset dementia. I’ve forgotten things before but I never had an entire day simply vanish. When I told my daughter, she said she was convinced all day Tuesday that it was Friday. That’s understandable, considering Covid and work from home. But to vanish an entire day altogether? The next day I woke up for my second Monday of the week. My doctor did see my emails but thought they were funny. We had a productive phone chat. Arriving at the Kaiser facility, I simply was asked to look at a list of horrible symptoms and say I had none of them before I was allowed to proceed, sans temperature check, to the mental health department where a lonely receptionist told me to put my gift bag in her in-basket. It was that easy. The big trick going forward will be to look at the calendar icon on my phone every morning before I leave the house or make untoward phone calls. I can do that. I can make it a habit . It would be a good habit to develop. There are only so many days in a lifetime that one can toss out the window.