Case of the Mondays

“Ooh..sounds like someboday has a bad case of the Mondays!”
Nina ~ Office Space

Some things just never change, regardless of where you live. Bad Mondays would be one of them. I knew it was going to be a bad day today when I woke up. The clue was the fact that I almost didn’t have the energy to do just that. I had spent half the night working as a flight attendant while the pilot elected to do loops during take-off, when thankfully my husband had to go to the bathroom and rescued me from a possible promotion into first class. The second half was spent looking for something in my purse, and then in my car, and in my desk at work, only to find that my fellow passengers (for once again I appeared to be on a plane) had taken the book I was looking for and would not give it back. So you understand why, after a night of serving coffee and attempting high levels of diplomacy, I did not wake rested and bouncy.

But rough nights happen to anyone, anywhere in the world. I’m sure you can all tell me about nights spent running marathons, trying to get the other side of the lake, talking to hamster, and hordes of other ornery activities. But there some things that are just very specific to my life right here in Georgia that only add to the frustration.

Having your husband call you from work at 6am, right before you are about to leave, for instance. I don’t know many people who can make that claim. Don’t misunderstand me, I love it when my husband calls, but when he calls right after getting to work, something is wrong. And indeed, for husband-dear had lost classified (think something very very small) and wanted me to go through all the pockets of his workpants to see if I could find it. Now I’m sure you’re all familiar with some variant of that routine, so you know the tiny amount of frustration I was experiencing as I’m rushing around the house getting things ready and trying to find out what husband-dear needs. While he is trying to tell me what to do, the clock on base strikes six, which means the national anthem is played as reveille, and he has to stop what he’s doing and stand at attention. Anyone? Ever? Now I’m cool with most base routines, but in this case, this one means I’m stuck at the other end, wishing for the goshdang anthem to hurry up so I can hear what the love of my life would like me to do so I can hurry up and get back into our routine here at the house.
Once we have come to the conclusion that classified a.k.a small annoying thing is not to be found anywhere at the house, I get to leave. I’ve got my laptop, my bookbag, my purse, my lunchbag, my hot tea, and NPR, so just maybe I can still salvage this morning. Wrong again. This time it was my fault; I had put too much milk in my tea. Usually this is no big deal at all, but when you can’t start drinking it until about 45 minutes into your drive, lest you start to get that infamous urge before you get to your destination, the amount of milk can make the difference between a lovely cup of warm tea or cold brown yucky stuff. This morning it was the latter. And because I live, and work, in the boonies, there are no Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, or anything drive-thrus which might serve a splash of caffeine to the driver in a rush anywhere on my 90-mile commute. My only options are various trucker stops, and I think I’ll pass on that experience. In short, I had no caffeine before I came to work.

And at work some people seemed to be vying for the “most annoying” award (No Steve, not you). We had a phone line put in that didn’t work, another new phone line whose number we don’t know, a plagiarism case that just won’t get resolved, a bunch of forms that should have been filled out last year and nobody told us about until today, and oh yeah, they don’t come with an extension, and, to top it all off, someone literally said; “Well, mistakes are made, and this is just one of them, so there is nothing we can about it”. Thank goodness the students were just amazing today though. I think they secretly figured out that crossing Dr. R. today meant a sudden death, so they kept it quiet.

Fortunately, the solutions to bad Mondays are universal. You go home on time, sit down, have some tea, cookies, ice cream, and run a nice hot bath. And that’s just what I’m going to do. Like Annie said, the sun will come out tomorrow!