leaving work early, or how not to be cranky on Friday

Today is Friday. It's the beginning of a long weekend. Almost everyone has Monday off, so we'll all be planning wonderful things to do with our "extra" time. I used to think an extra day meant I had more time to do more work or chores or tasks. I used to be young and foolish. Now I am old and often cranky on Fridays (before a three-day weekend or not) because I'm tired by the time 5PM rolls around on Friday and on the way home from work, I always run errands like filling up the car with gas (and helping the gazillion dollar gas cartel), grocery shopping, going to the post office (just put a bag over my head and ask me to breathe deeply to see if I can get some oxygen and some sense back into my brain--because who goes to the PO on Friday late afternoon?). By the time I am half-way through the grocery store I have assaulted three people and threatened at least two little kids who dared to look at me with smiles on their sticky little faces! Then, when I finally get home, I have to schlep the groceries into the house and put them away. On a hot day, this chore is tantamount to climbing Mt. Everest while facing in the opposite direction of "up". Then I open mail, shriek when I read my utility bill or some other monopolistic company's monthly charge, I change clothes--into the scariest outfit on the whole earth, guaranteed to keep away all intruders and most friends, and I proceed to catch up on paperwork, write letters, do e-mail and now I do blogging as well. Then I fall down on the couch, and, just as I am proving that gravity really works, I remember that I haven't had dinner and I go scrounge through my newly-purchased food items to see what I can fix quickly so I can go back into my living room to try proving gravity works...again! Then I turn on the TV and watch programs I generally don't care about or I get hooked on a movie because I really like it or it's so cheesy I just can't help watching, thinking somehow, sometime it will improve...and it never does. I am the essence of hope gone wrong. In my brain it's always springing eternally. Maybe that's why I often feel dizzy--all that springing going on and all. Anywho, that is why I love the fact that I left work early today--two whole hours early, because I actually still had some energy left and I was able to walk through the grocery store without glaring at other shoppers, mumbling to myself as I shuffled through the cans of tuna and boxes of shredded wheat, and I left the store feeling happy, knowing that it was still "early". I came home and tossed some clothes into the washer and I'm not contentedly blogging while they agitate them little selves in soapy water. I will have all the chores and errands and to do items done earlier than the time I normally arrive at the grocery store. This is good. I want more of this. I plan to petition my Congressional sycophants, oops, I mean representatives so that I can ask for "Early Fridays" as a means of creating good mental health for all of us. And if they aren't willing to help me with this, I'll just buy a blow up, look-a-like of me and put it in my chair in my office and leave work at 3PM on Fridays. Bet my boss won't notice. He likes to leave early on Fridays too! I think we have a plan...