Occasionally, a particular day gets inserted into the cycle of the week, and it seems to arrive unexpectedly. I will be puttering around, oddly frustrated with something, and suddenly I will say to myself, “Oh, it’s a non-day.”

Non-days arrive cyclically, like a leap day, and like leap days, they serve as a space to fix the cumulative errors of the normal schedule. Like really bad weather, there’s not much I can do about them except hunker down when they arrive, and wait for them to be over.

Yesterday, the weather was indeed bad. A relentless, cold rain bucketed down sloppily, and even with my rain clogs and the vast umbrella I rarely haul out, my trousers got wet. I had to go out, because French class is one of the highlights of the week, but it required effort on my part. I knew I should go, and I wanted to go, so I went.

It wasn’t the weather that heralded the non-day, though.

It was that I left my glasses behind in the coffee shop before class, the second important thing I’ve misplaced in two days. (The other was a portfolio I left behind on the bus, luckily with nothing important in it).

I should have recognized the signs at that point, but I have a lot of systems in place for convincing myself to get things done that I want to do, and I had confidence, and experience, so I hadn’t been paying attention to the voices in my head.

The first sign of an approaching non-day is the thought, “I should,” especially if it is followed by a whole bunch of other “I should.” (I should go to French class. I should go to my volunteer position. I should plan dinner for Thursday night. I should work on my current book.)

The second sign follows immediately afterwards, and is the word “but.” (I should, but it’s raining. I should, but I don’t want to. I should, but the whole thing is too confusing. I should, but volunteering is so awkward. I don’t know what to cook. I just deleted twenty five pages of my writing, because they didn’t work. I should vacuum the house, but my cat hates the vacuum. I should fold the laundry hanging on the basement clothesline, but I don’t want to even go down the stairs in the first place.)

And then the third sign. “I should, but” is followed by, “I won’t.” Even if all the things I should be doing are things I want to do. And I sit there, suspended in a blank space, realizing that I’m just not going to go down the cellar stairs and fold those damn clothes. I won’t do it.

If I don’t respect that voice, I start losing things, because my brain stops talking to me and starts taking action. It’s as if it starts throwing things, things I thought I needed like clothes, tools, or my glasses, out the window, just to keep me from trying to function.

Clearly, yesterday, I had been getting way too much done by dint of plodding along, making lists, breaking down my tasks, getting one thing done at a time, and checking things off. There’s only so long my constitution can put up with that kind of relentless order and sanity, apparently. Especially when it’s pouring rain out, it’s cold, it’s December, and it’s time for a non-day.

So yesterday, after I retrieved my glasses from the coffee shop, I caught a bus home, changed my wet jeans, and read a novel for most of the rest of the day, pausing only to argue with the cat and have some hot soup.

I woke up this morning, and my first coherent thought was, “Oh, I can do this,” because I can. I got up, scraped the cat litter, made the coffee, and folded the laundry. Today, clearly, is not a non-day.

I just wish I could see them coming earlier. But then, you can’t exactly plan for a non-day. They just arrive.