Symbolic Gesture

My fondness for nonsense knows no bounds

9:46 p.m. When I arrived at college (checks notes…ugh) more than 25 years ago I was not very worldly. Vermont is, to say the least, not the most diverse place in the world so I had limited exposure to much diversity. Upon arriving, I quickly became friends with a pair of Jewish guys, which revealed to me how little I knew about their religion. Fast forward three-plus years to our senior year, and out of both curiosity and solidarity, I went to temple and fasted for 24 hours with them during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Fast forward again, and I’m not sure exactly how many times, but on probably more than 10 occasions in the years since we graduated, I have again fasted during that particular holiday. I have not gone to temple, and often I don’t tell them I’m doing it. To me, it’s a simple gesture and show of support for my friends, and serves as a bit of a jolt to breakup the stagnancy of daily life. It carries little meaning, but in small way it feels like I’m doing “something.”

I have engaged in many a symbolic gesture over the years, not just the occasional 24-hour fast. And tonight I’m attempting another one. As I type this, my lovely wife is in the midst of a 24-hour shift at the hospital. She left the house around 6:45 this morning, and barring a drastic change, I won’t see her until about eight tomorrow morning. Depending on the day/night she may not be working nonstop for those 24 hours — there may be some downtime, or even some sleep. It’s possible that neither of those things will happen. This afternoon, when trying to cross things off my to-do list and realizing just how many things I wanted to get done, I made a decision: as a sign of solidarity I’m going to attempt to stay up for 24 hours as well.

Is this a bad idea? Almost certainly. Now instead of one fatigued adult in our house, there will be a pair! Yet, I don’t care. I am going to make the attempt. And since I have this here newsletter, I thought I might pop over to the laptop every now and then to provide updates on how it’s going, or offer random thoughts. You might notice I included a time stamp on the start of this entry, so you can track my coherence as the night progresses. Buckle up, it’s going to get weird.

10:31 p.m. I’m watching the game four of the World Series and some NBA basketball whilst I try to chip away at tasks tonight. I just saw an ad for Maker’s Mark bourbon with the tagline “Make Your Mark.” That seems like such an obvious slogan, I’m a little stunned they never used it before now. Or perhaps I’ve never seen their advertising before. Either way, “Make Your Mark” is an apt slogan for their product. Yes, this is the sort of insight readers can expect all night. I’m halfway through a cold cup of coffee.

11:00 p.m. An hour plus of laundry folding in the books and I’m pivoting to something else. I’m trying to mix and match the activities so I don’t burn out. I will admit, this desire for a symbolic gesture happened to coincide with a mild breakdown over the weekend when confronted by the state of our house. Since my transition to stay-at-home parent I’ve done my best to keep the house somewhat organized and clean, despite not being naturally inclined towards either of those things. What sometimes happens is one or two things slide a little bit, and then suddenly it feels as though everywhere I look there is chaos. When that happens, my instinct is to try and fix as much of it as possible all at once. Tonight, foolish or not, is part of that effort. I’m hoping to do a fair amount of sorting, purging, labeling, organizing, etc. along with some of the general upkeep things such as laundry. To be determined how well it works out. I will keep you all posted…unless I am buried under a pile of garbage in our basement.

12:23 a.m. I have crossed the threshold and am now in Wednesday. Caryn and I were planning to try and early vote today, I’m curious if either of us will be seeing straight enough to fill in the correct bubble. I’m back to laundry after a break for book sorting.

For some reason the disarray of the kid’s bookshelves was bugging me lately, and it fit nicely with my desire to reorganize and clean the playroom. Getting rid of old kid books can be emotional as there is a strong nostalgia element at play. There is also the complicating issue of trying to keep books for Declan even though he doesn’t read — but it’s nice to have things we can read to him that capture his attention. Our bookshelf has 12 sections, so the goal was to purge and organize all the books into those categories. Happy to report I was successful. Back to laundry.

1:35 a.m. The evening — or technically the morning — is at an inflection point. I have cleaned a folded a, and I believe this is the scientific term, shit ton of laundry. I put away my clothes, which are the only ones I can put away at this point. Were I a quitter, this is a perfectly logical, albeit late, time to go to bed. I am not a quitter and on I go. Though it does seem clear to me now that I’m not going to get as much done tonight as I hoped. Oh well.

2:17 a.m. Still being productive, friends. My reorganization of the play room is mostly complete and I have empty drawers which is exciting. I might even be able to move some storage down to the basement, which remains my white whale. I collected trash, and just wiped down the kitchen table and counters. Emptying the dishwasher is next up. For the moment I’m drinking water instead of coffee, though there is a double espresso on the counter with my name on it. Since I’m taking a little break, I figured I would dive into the depths of my memory for other times when I stayed awake for more than 24 hours for fun.

• I recall one night in high school myself and some friends drank a ton of Mountain Dew and stayed up all night watching movies. If memory serves the big discovery was that after consuming large amounts of Mountain Dew, urine almost appears to glow in the dark. I believe we also decided to play frisbee outside my house at approximately six in the morning. Kids are so annoying.

• Staying up for more than 24 hours is sort of a stereotypical college thing to do, and I’m sure I came close a few times. I do recall coming back from spring break my junior year our return was late Sunday night and then we drove from Florida back to Atlanta for classes on Monday. I volunteered to stay awake to help keep the driver awake, and then immediately went to class upon returning to campus. So that was probably a good 36 hours awake at which point I crashed in my dorm room and got in trouble for sleeping through a fire alarm.

• I had a night or two in Las Vegas in those first years out of college that definitely involved staying up for more than 24 hours. I also had some very late nights at my first job where I inexplicably decided it made more sense to sleep in the office than make the four minute drive back to my apartment.

• Peak 24-hour silliness came when I moved to New Jersey in 2007. I stayed up for some nonsensical reasons during this period. I actually did a similar ceremonial gesture to what I’m doing tonight when my friend Krista was in residency and told me she had a 24 hour shift. Though at that point I think it was a Friday so I stayed up all night watching sports and playing video games and then just slept on Saturday. Hard to believe I was single. A year or two later I stayed up and watched college basketball for 24 hours during their hoops tip-off marathon, and actually blogged about it and convinced friends to sponsor me. We raised some money for the American Heart Association. I did it again the next year, but that time I went to work after watching basketball all night. Again, stunning that no one thought I was a suitable partner.

• The closest I’ve come to a 24-hour stretch since meeting Caryn was a wild two-wedding weekend. I went to a friend’s wedding in Napa on Friday night, did not go to sleep and took a 6 a.m. flight to Chicago where I landed, went to Caryn’s apartment and took a shower, then went to another wedding and stayed up very late. It’s likely that I slept on the plane, so I don’t know if I can count that one. I guess the point is that while circumstances change, I have long been a lunatic.

3:28 a.m. A pen just exploded in my pocket and I got ink all over myself and all over the table. Things are going great. I will say the creature who most dislikes this endeavor is our beloved Sunny. She just wants me to settle down so she can go to sleep and I think she’s frustrated. Sorry Sunny.

3:52 a.m. The home stretch! I cleared off the junk area, though I still need to go through stuff. Probably not happening tonight, though. I am getting some bill paying done. At this point I’m probably not getting anything else significant done tonight. I’m gearing up to try and put up a flag later. So the political lawn signs for Democrat candidates have been disappearing in our neighborhood. I initially thought it was all political signs, but it turns out it’s just the Democratic candidates, so our Harris/Walz sign vanished shortly after we put it up. This is annoying, but not something that really raised my ire. Caryn, however, was not going to be defeated quite so easily. She bought a flag supporting the Harris campaign, but our attempts to hang it have failed. It’s blown off the house on two separate occasions and I’m getting a little frustrated. So my day tomorrow could be all about getting a flag properly displayed. And since we are talking about it, Click this link and then click volunteer to find some ways to be useful to a certain campaign in the final week.

4:38 a.m. School lunches are now made! I’m a machine. I think it’s time to play some video games for old time’s sake. I’m sure readers have been dying to know how my digital alter ego RD Urquhart has been faring leading St. Mirren in the Scottish Premier League. I’m NOT going to tell you, but I am going to go play a match or two to cap this tremendous evening.

5:43 a.m. Okay, I lied. Just a short update. RD Urquhart stood pat at the transfer deadline, rejecting bids for two of his players. He likes the state of his roster with one month of the season gone, though the results have not been quite what he was hoping for. He did capture a draw and a surprising 2-0 win at France in World Cup qualifying as he leads the Finnish National Team. Now time to shower and start the caffeine rolling.

6:14 a.m. I poured the coffee and it’s delicious. Rory woke up very early, which isn’t great, but he’s entertaining himself by reading in his room at the moment while I finish getting breakfast ready. I really thought I would find the time for more inane observations and stories during the course of the evening — I think I managed to stay busy enough that my mind didn’t wander too far afield. I will say after showering that every time I take a shower, I note to myself that I meant to take my towel off the towel rack and move it closer to the shower before I got in. Then I promptly forget every time I take one and proceed to get water all over the floor. It’s quite the pattern.

6:36 a.m. Rory is officially up and is mad I reorganized all the books. That was clearly time well spent. He’s also at the breakfast table so time to wrap this up.

Ham, cheese and spinach omelette along with fruit and half an english muffin on the menu this morning. Fun fact, I learned how to make omelette’s from my Dad despite not liking eggs. A few random final thoughts:

• This was actually easier than I expected, but I feel more tired than I remember when I did this previously. There may be a nap in my future.

• It’s really dark out at 6:36.

• I’m guessing I will be okay this morning — the afternoon may get a bit rough. And there is zero chance I’m not falling asleep in Rory’s room tonight when I put
  the boys to bed tonight.

• It’s pretty bonkers that we expect doctors to do this. And yes this was silly, but hopefully readers and Caryn appreciate the gesture. Symbolic though it may be.