{"id":5019,"date":"1995-12-05T01:57:00","date_gmt":"1995-12-05T08:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/?p=5019"},"modified":"2023-11-26T14:27:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T21:27:03","slug":"off-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/?p=5019","title":{"rendered":"Off Peak"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You know, we ought to live off peak. I was reading about this in a Reader&#8217;s Digest article about how to get more time out of your day. I was reading it only because I start at the beginning of a Reader&#8217;s Digest and read all the way through it while in the bathroom. I wanted to skip that article because I KNOW I&#8217;m not very efficient with time, and I don&#8217;t need anyone to tell me I am. But one of the items in it I liked. It talked about living off peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br \/>That means going to work early to avoid rush hour, or eating at a restaurant at four in the afternoon when no one else is gonna be there. Maybe I liked it because it was talking about living differently from everyone else. Maybe it&#8217;s just because my family is so screwy that we do everything at odd times anyway. When I homeschooled, I would get up about nine, eat breakfast and stuff by ten, then we&#8217;d eat lunch about two, supper at eight or nine, and then I&#8217;d go to bed whenever. We still eat supper late. And I suppose by staying up till odd hours in the morning during the weekend and sleeping in till noon, I live off peak myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br \/>My mom called a family meeting after supper the other night to talk about Christmas, what we wanted to do this year and stuff. &#8220;Do we want to have lights outside? do we want a Christmas letter? do we want a tree?&#8221; I dunno, every year we talk about doing Christmas differently and every year we seem to do it the same. Anyway, I said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s live off peak. Let&#8217;s just celebrate Christmas a week later. We can pick up a Christmas tree that someone&#8217;s dumped out already, and if there&#8217;s still some tinsel on it, we won&#8217;t have to decorate it.&#8221; That&#8217;s a line from one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. My grandmother was laughing at this point, my sister was rolling her eyes so hard I thought they might just roll right out of her head, my dad was shaking his head, and my mom was trying not to act amused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br \/>Ben got excited, &#8220;Yeah!&#8221; I went on, &#8220;And everything will be on sale so we won&#8217;t have to buy presents or anything else at full price. It&#8217;s all part of living off peak.&#8221; My mom squinted at me. She does that whenever she thinks she&#8217;s not heard me correctly. &#8220;What?&#8221; she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br \/>Dad cleared his throat. &#8220;So\u2026&#8221; he said, &#8220;Do we want a Christmas tree this year?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br \/>We&#8217;ll be getting yet another Lealand Cyprus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know, we ought to live off peak. I was reading about this in a Reader&#8217;s Digest article about how to get more time out of your day. I was reading it only because I start at the beginning of a Reader&#8217;s Digest and read all the way through it while in the bathroom. I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5020,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5019\/revisions\/5020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}