Posts Tagged ‘Mondays’
Felt Hot
Yesterday was day two in the 80s and combined with the drought we are experiencing, it felt rather unsatisfying around here. Admittedly, being unsatisfied with warmth in October isn’t something we usually express, but it’s because the warmth was actually annoyingly hot.
At least we enjoyed the benefit of having our windows open overnight, so the hoots of our forest owls were easy to hear.
If I was still tied to a day-job, I would have called in yesterday and claimed a mental health day. Instead, I just showed up for chores a few minutes late. Maybe it’s because it was a Monday, even though Mondays are no longer the dreaded burden like they were for 40-some years of my gainful employment.
Of course, for Sunday sports fans, football game losses and Championship WNBA game 5 losses can easily cast a pall of gloom that carries over into Mondays. That is something that doesn’t affect dogs, horses, or spouses who can take or leave team athletic competitions with zero residual impact.
“Honey, our unbeaten streak is over!”
“Oh? Can you unload the dishwasher for me?”
Asher just wanted to go outside and run after his favorite yard ball with a rope through the middle of it. That is a game in which he requires a person to act like they want possession of the ball more than he does.
Yesterday, I would have preferred to unload a dishwasher.
Eventually, despite the heat, I managed to drag myself down by the road to do battle in some of our thickest undergrowth to eradicate more buckthorn shoots that had sprouted from stumps I had cut the year before. I coerced Cyndie into coming along to help point out locations because when I get in the middle of things, I tend to overlook opportunities that are often right behind me or practically underfoot.
After lunch, I made my way down along the fence line on the far side of the hay field with the pole chainsaw trimmer to clear out low-hanging box elder tree branches that were beginning to droop too close to the top wire. My desire to have those branches cut down has increased every day that I’ve walked Asher along that pathway for the last few months.
It feels so great to have them finally dispatched that I find I no longer care about what happened in Sunday’s sports competitions.
Although, carrying the heavy pole saw all the way back from the far side of the field in the high heat kept me from feeling too much in the way of jubilance.
The first thought I had when I eventually returned to the house was that it was too hot to be wearing socks. I’m hoping the local meteorologist’s claim that yesterday would be the last time we reach 80 this year proves accurate.
I am very ready for some weather that deserves warm socks.
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Arbitrary Thinking
For no particular reason on a Monday morning, my attention sometimes bounces in many directions.
- Weekend spectator sports were entertaining but the Achilles injury to Minnesota Vikings Quarterback, Kirk Cousins, looms large on prospects for our future.
- I stayed up late on Saturday night and found myself laughing a couple of times at scenes on Saturday Night Live.
- Despite media outlets marketing it as a feature, no part of me wishes to receive “real-time updates” on news feeds covering wars.
- I could listen to some foreign accents forever while I find others deeply irritating, but I don’t know why.
- I will admit to an attraction to streaming series that have actors with superb accents.
- Last week, Cyndie and I went out to dinner to celebrate 49 years since we started dating. For dessert, we ordered her favorite salted caramel chocolate tart.
- Last night, after dinner of a deep-dish pizza from the freezer, Cyndie served her homemade version of the same salted caramel chocolate tart, along with a bite of dark chocolate pecan toffee she also made.
- The quality of both treats was so impressive, they matched anything I’ve tasted at high-end shops or restaurants.
- Last week we bought tickets to fly with friends to visit Iceland next year.
- None of my awake dreams come close to the realism I experience in my sleeping dreams. Why is that?
- Sometimes when I see someone near my age with features that trigger memories of a grade-school crush, I wonder what that person looks like now.
- Is it possible that dogma is the root of all evil?
- I love that animals can tell when we love them.
- Imagine if we bathed our brains with healthy healing thoughts that primed our cerebrospinal fluid to facilitate our synapse-firing pathways for goodness.
- What if we always offered others the slices of life we would want for ourselves?
- Even though I am no longer employed during a workweek, Mondays still retain a residual stigma for me.
- Yesterday, I contemplated what cover design would appeal to me if Relative Something were a book. (I find it hard to compete with an animated GIF that has the word “LOVE” blowing in the wind.)
- Did you know I don’t drink coffee?
- No matter what variety of distractions I think about, it doesn’t change that I will be driving Cyndie to a hospital for another surgery this week. For some reason, I keep finding myself thinking about that.
Happy Monday, everyone. Unless you are reading this in Australia today. Happy Tuesday to any readers down under
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Still Melting
Sunny afternoons have become the norm and the melting of snow continues. A larger section of snow has broken off the garage roof.
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I left it lay and headed inside to watch Superbowl hype. I wasn’t very invested in the activity surrounding the game but enjoyed that the scoring was as balanced as it was. It provided a welcome distraction from more serious matters in the world for a few hours. What’s with all the unidentified objects getting shot down from our skies?
If my home team was one of the teams in that game I wouldn’t have enjoyed the stress. I probably would have gone out to shovel snow away from the garage door and read about the outcome after the fact.
I felt a little melted, myself yesterday. Our night out to Chanhassen on Saturday had us up well past a healthy bedtime. We arrived home well after midnight, which cut deeply into my hours of sleep. There is no sleeping-in beyond the normal feeding time of the horses in the morning, so hours of sleep lost at the beginning of my nights are not able to be paid back after sunrise.
It was grand being able to turn in at a decent hour last night. Unfortunately, it still feels like a Monday this morning, which is weird because, in my retirement, there is no real difference from one day to another.
Maybe since it is Monday the 13th it feels spookier. Why didn’t that become a thing? Sounds a lot more ominous than Friday the 13th to me.
I hope you don’t feel melted this morning, especially if you celebrated a little excessively for the big game last night. Congratulations to Kansas City fans!
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Attitude Adjustment
I’m not sure how much the weather forecast for today, Tuesday, of “Snow, mainly after 10am. The snow could be heavy at times… New snow accumulation of 3 to 5 inches possible” contributed to making my Monday such a mental slog. Of course, that wouldn’t be living in the moment, would it?
Guilty as charged.
We are probably more prepared for the oncoming winter season right now than most other years, but that hasn’t served to assuage the typical hesitation long commuters feel about the arrival of snow.
That wasn’t the only stressor that yesterday, a classic Monday, presented, all of which accumulated so that by the time I arrived home, I was exhausted. Cue the kitty.
Pequenita offered me a little feline focused attitude adjustment. If you have a cat, you know the drill. After a little meow and some purring, while she rubs against me from every direction, Pequenita often settles down on my shins to convince me that we’re good. She’s got me, and I’ve got her.
Let it snow.
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Some Days
Yesterday at work I found myself a little short of feeling like my best. Was it simply a result of it being a Monday? Possibly. More likely, it had something to do with a sub-par night’s sleep. I couldn’t get myself to turn off the Cubbies Sunday night as they eked out a victory in game 5 of the World Series. That kept me up past my bedtime.
In addition, my days of having the whole bed to myself came to an end when Cyndie arrived home from visiting the Morales family in Guatemala in the wee hours of oh-dark-thirty. That’s about the worst time of night to have a sleep cycle interrupted.
As I sat at my desk trying to shake out the cobwebs, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should have just stayed home for the day. It wasn’t anything physical. I felt fine, I just didn’t feel all that… fine.
Then an issue needed to be addressed, and another, and another. Good thing I didn’t stay home. I may not have been my best, but I was present and available to at least contribute in the moment. Some days we need to allow ourselves to accept this as good enough. Half-speed is better than no speed at all when there is work to be done.
So, Cyndie got home in the middle of the night and I left for work in the dark of morning. She was back, but I hadn’t seen her yet, so I was getting excited to get home. I had no idea I would find this:
She had a fire in the fireplace and the kitchen filled with the aroma of fresh-baked cookies, there were scones she’d baked for breakfast, and that bread was rising on the stove. Oh, and it was nice to be able to see her, too.
As it was, a day that started out less than fine, turned out pretty darn good in the end.
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Windy Monday
Is it because it was a Monday? That’s my excuse. Hassles at work. Discombobulation at home. It felt like what Mondays are always being accused of feeling like.
I felt an unexplainable urge to walk round and round, circling in place like Delilah before she lays down, before flopping down myself like a rag doll on our couch, beneath a blanket, in front of the fire Cyndie had burning in the fireplace when I got home.
I suppose it could have been the wind. Blowing snow around at 20-mph, with gusts into the 30s. Driving the commute home was an adventure of wavering vehicles, wobbling back and forth in their lanes.
In a fateful calm, I found myself mentally preparing for the sound of scraping metal that never came, as an eighteen wheel tractor-trailer rig worked its way past me in the fast lane, moving ridiculously close in my peripheral view, several times, as it eased by in the wind.
Who knows what inspired me to decide to dig into documents I knew Cyndie would need to begin the process of preparing information to give to our accountant for our 2015 tax returns. Maybe it was my way of avoiding looking for the card I stowed almost 6 months ago that would tell me what day my next dentist appointment is supposed to be.
I’m growing tired of the insidious plaque on the inside of my bottom front teeth that I can’t stay ahead of cleaning. I think I need floss with a coarser grit. The magical kind that shreds plaque, but stops short of eroding enamel or gums. Yeah. That kind.
Thank goodness I had no allegiance to the teams involved in the Superbowl game Sunday night. I imagine the fans of the Panthers had a pretty gloomy Monday. The fans of the Broncos were probably too delirious to recognize what day it was, let alone whether it was a hassle or not. I watched the game, but the outcome had no bearing on my mental balance, one way or the other.
We finished the evening by deciding to register our online presence with our new healthcare provider for 2016. Cyndie wanted to verify some details of our coverage. She went round and round through loops of links that looked promising, but all fell mercilessly short of the information she was curious about. We were trying to be conscientious, well-informed health plan participants, but the struggle and stress of the online search process began to feel unhealthy.
We decided to take a break and have an ice cream dessert nightcap. I was all too willing to disregard my day’s sugar tally.
The type of day I had yesterday was solely a function of it being a Monday. Or it was the wind.
It might have been the wind.
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Relative Something 