Today could have gone quite poorly. Due to snow days and the MLK holiday, today was the first Monday I’ve had to teach so far this semester and therefore also the first Monday I’ve had to teach since summer. I was a Tuesday/Thursday Lady last semester and let’s just say I sure got to like it.

But you can’t win them all, so into work I had to go. I normally get up at 6:00, but today my dog decided it was time to get up at 5:00. “Take me out,” he said. “Feed me,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said.

This continued until about 5:45, at which time my cat started making that human-like garbled howling noise that announces a hairball is on its way from inside of her body to outside of it.”Oh woe oh woe oh woe,” she said.

I got up.

A Monday morning that begins with such loving* attention from two adorable* pets is a thing of beauty*, am I right?

(*Am I using these words correctly?)

Despite its inauspicious beginning, my Monday turned out to be pretty nice. Not spectacular, but nice for a working Monday, you know? Lots of little things seemed to brighten it up. Here’s a list:

1. I wore a pretty new dress for the first time.



2. I actually remembered to fix some coffee in my to-go mug and also successfully put it in the car and then I even brought it into the office, enabling me to drink it. I don’t always get all those steps right.

3. People I have met through blogging can be truly, incredibly nice.

4. Last week I strained my right calf (either Vibrams- or weight-lifting-related injury, not sure) but today it finally feels back to normal. I am planning some running and some yoga and such. Carefully.

5. I made falafel for dinner, complete with my own non-dairy tzatziki. Take that, cow-yogurt-having restaurant falafel!

6. I went to the grocery store to pick up another jar of my latest strange addiction, Bonne Maman brand cherry preserves (heavenly, I mean it), and while there I made an amazing discovery: at the grind-your-own-nut-butter station, there was a peanut grinder that had a few vegan dark chocolate chips mixed in. Not only did this allow me to grind my own chocolate-peanut butter, which is really damned delicious, I also got to think about the term “grind-your-own-nut-butter station” and quietly snicker my way through the store.



Nut butter. Grind your own. Heh.

So how has your Monday been?
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VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE! A Facebook friend’s post alerted me to the fact that today is allegedly “Blue Monday,” otherwise known as the most depressing day of the year. What a day for me to write a post here declaring that I had a great Monday in spite of its awful (cat-puke-filled) start.

Here’s what I think about this: you can have a dreary day that gets off to a bad beginning, full of inconveniences and petty frustrations and disgruntlement. And if things start out that way it’s easy to blame it on a Monday, a bad day, or a “most depressing day of the year” scenario. But then doesn’t that just shut out from your mind all of the small successes and unexpected pleasantries? The things that, added up, could swing your day from bad to good? I don’t mean to be all Pollyanna on you here, but this shit matters.

There’s a reason I didn’t come over here to complain about how much money I spent on groceries, or the fact that I have to go to the dentist tomorrow, or the new zit I found, or the rest of that litany of complaints I could have (quite justifiably) also authored today. I’m not sure what that reason is or what shifted my perspective today or what has been shifting it generally. I like it, though. All for it.