A Lazy Millennial Guide to Saturday Mornings
Drawn by my sister!
Somewhere between 9am and noon, you finally give in to the sunlight that’s escaped the world outside your window and rested selfishly on your face. “Alexa,” you yawn, “what’s the weather like today?”
“It’s 62 degrees with sunny skies. You can expect the same throughout the day, with a high of 71 and a low of 43,” she replies. Perfect weather for staying inside, you decide.
If you ever experienced a powerful, dual feeling of loneliness and responsibility, you probably have a pet that you need to take care of. If not, you probably only have a plant, in which case you can proceed to think only of yourself.
A few days ago you were struck with pure, unadulterated genius and ordered a mini waffle maker on Amazon. Then you went to Target on your way home from work and got Belgian waffle mix, because real adults eat European foods, or something, and because the picture on the box looked fancier than the normal kind of waffle. Like, Leslie Knope-worthy.
You were about to buy whipped cream when you remembered that one of your friends almost rolled his eyes out of his head when you said you liked store-bought whipped cream, and immediately showed you how to make it yourself. And doggone if it didn’t taste way better, take almost no time, and even cost about the same yet resulted in waaay more. So you got cream, sugar, and vanilla instead. Your mom gave you her old hand mixer as an excuse to get herself a new one in her favorite color, so you’ve got that part covered.
Now here it is Saturday and you’re feeling pretty Adult-ish mixing your homemade whipped cream as music plays on your Alexa, the waffle maker heats up, and the coffee brews.
Cartoons and Waffles
Half a dozen mini waffles later, all buried under the whipped cream, you’re back in bed and searching “Cartoons” in Netflix on your smart TV, which you got for peanuts (relatively) on Facebook Marketplace. Nostalgia sweeps over you until you realize they’re missing at least half of what you used to watch, and you curse the internet gods for not being thorough or convenient enough. How do they not have The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats, or Scooby-Doo? They don't even have Looney Tunes!
You switch to Amazon but that doesn’t help. Same with Hulu. Even a Google search doesn’t give you what you’re looking for. Finally you give up and decide to do it the old-fashioned way: Playlists on YouTube. Someday, you think as you stab a waffle and your video loads, the world will be so advanced that all your childhood cartoons will be in one place, free, on demand.
Including offline. Maybe you’ll invent it. Or maybe you’ll just ask your friend to do the work but give you half the proceeds in return for thinking of it in the first place and generously offering to make her rich off the idea. Maybe tomorrow.
As the cartoons roll in the background, you check your main and side job email accounts to triple check that you truly have nothing due today. When your fears are finally put to rest, you start on your social media spiral: send a Snapchat laughing at your childishly adult morning to your Story, check other people’s stories, switch to Instagram, then to Facebook, over to Twitter to check what’s trending, then back to Snapchat to see how many people have seen your story so far.
Call of the World
Eventually, a forgotten alarm goes off on your phone: Your car needs an oil change, you have an appointment for an eye exam because apparently you're not trusted to know when your contact prescription needs to change, and your Groupon for hipster donuts is about to expire.
Clearly, your morning is over.
You sigh as long and loudly as possible, pause YouTube to finish your episode later, stuff the last mini waffle in your mouth, and get up to put on real pants. Maybe tomorrow you can have a real lazy day.