Preemption

In my early days working on soaps, there were no days off, except on rare occasions when the show was preempted for a news event, like today's inauguration. (Okay, perhaps that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there was a year when my family had Thanksgiving in my small Hoboken apartment so that I could work the next day.)
 
By the time my soap days were over, production had been consolidated so much for cost-cutting purposes that there were weeks off all over the place, once in a while in sync with my children's school schedules, sometimes completely not, so even at the end, it was rare for me to be home with my kids on a weekday.  They'd be sleeping, enjoying the benefits of a school-free day (which they'd spend with a sitter or at vacation camp), while I headed off to work, business as usual.
 
I always thought, "I wish I could be home with them and do something special for the day off." But today, as we are making our way through Martin Luther King Day, there has been no earth-shatteringly special event or outing.  Just some homework, some jockeying for computer time, and lunch together.  Not so different from what we'd do on a normal weekend day.  Yet, for me, it is special.  I know that I will soon be back to not sharing their vacation days, back to getting them up early to drop them off at vacation camp or leaving them sleeping while I race away.  So today, I am relishing our nothing-special day together.  There may be a whole lot of perks I'll be happy to have with my next job, but, for now, I might as well enjoy the perks of this job (or lack of one, depending on your point of view).
 
So, sorry, folks, your regularly scheduled day has been preempted.  Tune in tomorrow for the next chapter in the continuing saga of "Not Washed Up Yet."