A new weekday, invented by travelers: Muesday

The Hero and I have returned from our visit to Hawaii in one piece—an outcome that looked doubtful at certain points during our trip, which we'll discuss another day—although we feel like parts of us have remained behind in the various time zones through which we passed in the last couple of days. Factor in the recent time change for the mainland, but not for Hawaii, and you get: two confused travelers.

There is about a 15-hour period of time that is unaccounted for in our memories, other than intermittent communication with each other centered on determining what day it was.

"Is today Tuesday?"

"No, I think it's Monday."

"But didn't we already have Monday?"

"Uh, I don't remember Monday...maybe we spent Monday thinking it was Tuesday?"

We did agree that we were due back at our respective workplaces on Wednesday. This precipitated another volley of speculations.

"Do we go to work tomorrow? Or the next day?"

"I think it's more like tomorrow and half a tomorrow."

The last time we can clearly recall knowing what time and day it was is in the Maui airport, as we waited for the first leg of our trip back home. We were halfway through our Starbucks drinks when we realized, dimly, that by the time we got home we would have missed our sleeping hours—in any time zone—and therefore even though it was merely 6:00 in the evening on Tuesday (or was it Monday?), we should probably sleep during the 7-hour flight to Dallas. I promptly yielded up my coffee to the garbage can.

As we discovered, when you are traveling the one part of you that does have some sense of time is: your stomach. Even it, however, is limited in its usefulness. It can only alert you to a general feeding time, not specifically which meal should be forthcoming (lunch? dinner? linner?)

Perhaps it is just as well. If it is breakfast time in the time zone in which you find yourself, then even though you are SURE that you should be having lunch, every food item you encounter at the airport will contain an egg of some sort.

And should you find yourself in the airport at 4:22 a.m., as we did on Monday (Tuesday?), give several cheers for Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, which seem to operate at all hours in any time zone, including Martian.

To them I gratefully raise my cup of Americano and say, "Happy Muesday."