The Challenge of Mondays...

I always think the hardest part about Mondays is actually getting out of bed. Once you tell yourself it really and truly is time to get up and your feet finally hit your bedroom floor after being roused from a comfortable slumber, it's all slightly more downhill. Once you're up, you're up. The rest of the day passes, maybe in a bit of a fog, but it passes. When you're done, you're left with the triumph of knowing you got through another Monday.

But it's that getting out of bed that's the hardest. This morning, my bed was a warm cocoon around me. I had stayed up too late reading and all I wanted to do was snuggle into my down comforter and ignore the fact that my alarm was blaring and that it was time to put on Mr. Weatherman and Company to find out what was going on in the Cincinnati area.

I did make it today. It was hard. I keep my house cool at night- partially because it means I don't have to pay quite so much for heat and partially because I sort of like being cold until I climb under the covers and make my little nest. This morning, it felt cold without me needing to stick more than my nose out into my room. Getting up was painful. I wanted to bash my radio alarm with a hammer so that I could pretend it never went off.

Yet, as usual, I succumbed to the necessity of the workday and got up. After that, the day got easier.

It wasn't a bad day today. I'm in a busy phase at work. My days tend to rush by rather quickly. I had the added bonus of going to a birthday lunch today which was extra nice. My brownies seemed to be a hit. I went to put them away at the end of the day, back into their Tupperware, only to discover there was one, lone brownie left. Also, I didn't get pelted with my baked goods so thus, I think it was definitely a success.

Yet my favourite part of Mondays is the end of the day: Coming home. I like Monday evenings. To me, they're a reward after a hard, labourious day in the office. I rarely schedule anything for Monday evenings because I know I'm going to be useless. All I really want to do on a Monday night is come home, take off my shoes and relax. The rest of the week never seems to be quite as hard, it's really just Mondays.

That's not to say I don't like Mondays. They have their place. Everything must begin, just as everything must end. I appreciate Mondays because they make me appreciate Friday afternoons. Monday mornings are the polar opposite to a Friday afternoon. Monday mornings are, typically, sluggish blurs of time in which you tend to grunt at your coworkers in what you think is a friendly tone to ask about their weekend when, in actuality, you're still half-asleep and won't remember a few hours from when you asked. In contrast, ask a coworker what he/she has planned for the weekend and it's usually likely you might still remember on Monday. It's peculiar. Mondays are full of darkness, Friday's full of light. Naturally, this is only applicable to the employees, like me, who work a regular Monday to Friday week though I'm sure it's the same no matter when your workweek begins and ends.

My Monday evening is almost over. I didn't make quite as much of it as I wanted to though I did make a tasty dinner- Tuscan bean soup with spinach and garlic with parmesan crisps as an accompaniment. I also managed to make a shopping list based on recipes I want to try from my cookbooks. I managed to talk to a friend and to submit a query to another agent because I recieved a rejection yesterday from one of the five I queried last week. My current strategy is to submit one query for every rejection I receive. This way, in theory, I should always have five query letters out there in rotation, even when I get rejected. Hopefully, I can keep up with that.

Tomorrow night, I'd like to pretend I'm going to do what I always say I'm going to do: Come home, flop on the settee and do nothing but watch the television. However, even when I intend to do that, something ends up distracting me. Tomorrow, for example, I plan on a trip to Jungle Jim's. My recipes require ingredients and where better to find my ingredients that the best grocery store I've ever been to? I just hope they have cardoons. They generally do. I have two or three recipes which require them. The last time I was there, I bought them on a whim and ended up making an amazingly tasty Baked Cardoons- Roman Style recipe from Mr. Batali. Fabulous, if I do say so myself.

I'm rambling. However, since it's a Monday, I think I have a pass. Mondays are rambly type of days. I don't really know what my excuse is the other five days of the week but I bet you I could probably find a way to blog about it.

For now, however, this has been a Monday- for better or for worse. The way I look at it is that I managed to get out of bed and make it to work on time. It's not much but, for a Monday, it's half the battle. The rest of the week should be a breeze.

Happy Monday...