Snow Day

Sunday nights suck at my house.  Maybe it’s because the weekend is over, his kids go back to their Mom’s and he’s back to work the next day.  Or maybe it’s because his football team (the Lions) get blown out on TV.  Or maybe something horrible happened on a Sunday night when he was young.

Whatever the reason, Mr. Hyde is a mixture of depressed and pissed off on Sundays.

Last night was no exception.  He held it together pretty well at bowling in front of our teammates. We lost badly, but it’s just for fun and we all remind each other of that while we’re tossing more gutter balls than strikes.

When we got home, he doesn’t need to pretend to be happy anymore. He feels free to unleash his moodiness on us, of course.  My son excitedly showed us he had Monday off for a snow day -- he found the announcement on our community school channel.  Mr. Hyde glared at me and stormed out of the room.  He stomped back to our room and slammed the door shut. 

WTF?  I couldn’t imagine why a snow day made him angry so out of curiosity, I followed him back and cautiously asked what was wrong.

“I was supposed to have the day to myself tomorrow,” Mr. Hyde snidely answered.  He planned to take a half day so he could go see his son’s basketball game.  I pointed out his son’s game might be cancelled because he might have a snow day too, but he argued that HIS son’s school district wasn’t so wimpy and would certainly be open the next day. 

“Well,”  I tried again, “you could always go to the mall or book store or something to have time to yourself.”  

“I was really looking forward to being able to relax at home,” he snapped.