Is there anything in life more pleasant than an afternoon nap?
Well, yes, I suppose there are a few things, some of which aren’t really appropriate for a family audience, but assuming that I’m not going to get a booty call from Kate Winslet anytime soon and Publisher’s Clearing House didn’t just park their van around the corner, I ask again … is there anything more pleasant than an afternoon nap?
There’s a delicious sense of guilty pleasure in taking time that I could be using for something important, something productive, and spending it instead drifting off to sleep with the soporific tones of NPR wafting me away to unconsciousness. After all, I could be writing the next great American novel, or working out, or volunteering in a soup kitchen, or learning to become a sushi maven … but instead I’m asleep. And I’m OK with that.
It’s been a long week; I put in a dozen or more hours of overtime at the store because we’ve had a couple of staff quit lately. Nothing cataclysmic … one moved out of town, and a part-timer found a full-time job now that she’s finished with school … but it’s left us shorthanded, at least temporarily.
The back room, where we receive the books, process them into our system, and handle the returns to publishers, was beginning to look a little like Santa’s workshop on December 24, so I spent the better part of a week burrowed away in there trying to scale Mount Literature. It’s a quite pleasant place to work occasionally, because it’s removed from customers. I can play music that isn’t quite going to work for the sales floor, dress down, and just hammer out some productive work.
And as a payoff, I can take an afternoon nap without regret or guilt. Doesn’t get better than that. Well, unless Kate calls.