Rules for Sleep In Thursday...

1. It must be a Thursday. (Unless of course you've chosen another day.)

2. You must sleep in.

3. Everyone must participate although there is discretionary time given as to what constitutes sleeping in for one person versus another.

4. Breakfast becomes discretionary if the sleeping in has occurred past the point where Mom has closed the kitchen to prepare for an upcoming meal. The one sleeping in takes this risk at his own tummy growling hazard.

5. Everyone must agree before sleeping in that once up, regular chores and tasks will proceed at normal pace. Choosing to snail crawl through chores and tasks voids the point of sleeping in. Namely, sleeping in is to restore vitality and energy, not zap it.

6. If you wake before a fellow household member on Sleep In Thursday, you must maintain quiet so as not to disturb the sleeping in of other members.

7. Mom must agree that sleeping in might (and usually does) mean that some things are not accomplished on sleep in Thursday as opposed to other days. However, Mom must remember the long range goals of point of sleep in Thursday. Namely, avoiding Massacre Friday because everyone is overly tired.

8. Sleep in Thursday is not a right but a privilege and therefore, can be rescinded as a penalty to lack of gratitude for its benefits.

Historical context to Sleep In Thursday for the Complete Thought household:

Anyone who knows me knows I run a tight ship. I'm a regular gunny. Schedules work well for me in maintaining self-discipline and for all those who I'm mostly in charge of on the regular basis issues. However, a schedule should not be a tyrant and when the schedule began to prove itself as a shaper of tyrannical behavior in the schedule maker, a change had to occur. Sleep In Thursday was birthed in response.

Immediately benefits were seen in household members as the extra hour or two of sleep kept everyone from cannibalism. Thursday was chosen because it was the first day that did not require a particular schedule of external activities. And obviously, life sometimes demands that Sleep In Thursday happens on another actual day. The point of the day is that the Lord had it right in requiring a day of rest. Sleep In Thursday is not a day of rest, nor does it replace our Lord's Day activities, but instead a morning where natural functions of sleep override the tyranny of the urgent.

My next goal is to create Sleep In Thursday as a national holiday. Everybody can think more clearly after a little extra sleep.