Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-09-10 - 11:28 a.m.

Stalking the Grouse

Mondays suck.

Other days suck too, but Mondays are the suckiest, I think. They're the transition day. Yesterday I spent the day doing the kinds of work that I can feel virtuous about, work that needs doing around the house, but nothing off the "ouch" list. Just things I more or less wanted to do. Sorting and putting away. It doesn't show, but it kept me amused, and it was close enough to work for me to feel good about it.

It was Sunday. Not much is going to happen on a Sunday. And if it did, on Sunday there's nothing I could do about it anyway. Yeah, Sunday is the day of rest, of work that really isn't.

Then Monday morning comes crashing in on my sleep, yelling, "DO you know what TIME it is? Where are your socks? Did you return that call yet? Today's the day, you know! Get your ass out of bed NOW!"

I don't WANT to get to of bed. There is NOTHING on the list of things I have to do today that I WANT to do. I guess that defines being a grown-up. There's no recess, there's no gummy bears, there's not a single thing that looks like fun. And on Monday mornings, it stretches out that way to infinity. Far as I can see, life is full of things I have to do and things I should have done already and things that are so unpleasant to contemplate that back-to-bed looks awfully tempting.

Of course, the more one goes back to bed, the larger the gremlins get; something overdue last week is only going to get overduer. (I like that. Overduer. Because the contraction would be O'erdure, appropriately: stuff off the Shit List.) I know that it takes only a step or two or six to put me on my way, get me plowing through the ordure, and that I will end up feeling better about life in general and myself in specific if I take that step. But with Monday morning yammering in my ear and yanking on my arm, that first step looks damn near impossible, and certainly unattractive. And there's always that bed. Perhaps another hour of sleep would put me in a more enthusiastic mood.

I vacillate. I'm good at it; I'm a born Vacilene. I tell myself disgustedly, "Kiddo, when they were passing out the maturity you musta stepped out for a short beer." I cheer myself on: "Look at all these other people! They don't feel like this! They're showered and dressed and going off to important jobs! THEY grew up, you can do it too!" But then the whine joins in on the second verse: "THEY don't have stuff as hard as YOUR stuff, YOUR list is worse than theirs, it's just too hard, it's too much for one person to do, the whole thing is too unfair, better go take a nap."

You may think that I am exercising some adult discipline, to be writing when every cell is begging to crawl back under those quilts. But the truth is that I had an unpleasant encounter this morning with the wicker sock basket, and my foot is still bleeding a bit, and I don't want to get blood on the sheets. Preserving the sheets is about all the adult I can muster on Monday mornings.

�

previous - next

�