When Monday has Teeth

Mr. Jim Davis owns Garfield

I'm going to sound like a Garfield cartoon, but Monday bit me hard and hasn't let go yet. 

Yes, yes, I do realize it's Friday.

Monday started out with a sleepless night due to a nasty scrape on my knee and various aches 'n pains thanks to weekend yard work.

In the kitchen, I headed for the coffee pot with the singlemindedness of a zombie going for brains. Water, filter, pot... How hard can it be?

A couple minutes I had a pot full of hot water. Coffee? Oh yeah! Beans!

Okay, take two: water, filter, beans...  Check, check, check. So I threw the switch and water went EVERYWHERE.  

Shit! Shit! Shit! 

POT!

As I sopped up hot water off the counter, Mr. Snark sailed into the kitchen. "Making coffee is a complicated task," he said. "Move aside and allow a MAN to handle it."

Humiliated, I stomped off, grumbling beneath my breath.

Time passed. I recovered from the coffee fiasco and took Miss Bear to the gym. The May day was nice. Warm but not hot. A little cloudy. Miss Bear and I decided to go for a long bike ride.  Miss Bear has one of those trailers that hooks on behind my bicycle, so she rides in comfort while I do all the work.

We had a nice lunch and then headed to the library where we browsed books for about an hour. On the way out, the weather took a turn for the worse and it started to sprinkle. Looking up, I decided to take my chances and try to make it home. Miss Bear had an hour left before her naptime and she'd started to get grumpy.

Within a couple minutes of setting out, I knew I'd made a dreadful mistake. The clouds opened and a downpour hit. I got drenched. Fortunately, Miss Bear's trailer has a plastic cover that mostly keeps her dry. Some water seeps in but not a lot.

The bike ride home took a lot longer than it should have. Visibility sucked. I had to watch for oblivious drivers and puddles that might be too deep for the trailer to pass through. It was tense. At one point, I turned off the main road onto a side street because there was no sloped area, no proper crosswalk and no light. 

I reached an appropriate area for crossing and naturally some dude in a big white pickup truck drove up and wanted to make a left hand turn in front of me. I waved him to go because I had no intention of entering a roadway with any sort of traffic on it in the pouring rain.

Lucky me, the jackass proved to be a gentleman. No, you go. He waved and waited. I indicated no and he pointed, waved, waited some more in the bone dry cab of his freakin' truck with no regard at all for the fact that I was cold, miserable and getting unhappier with each passing second. I swear, if he'd climbed out of the pickup right then, I'd have throttled him. 

Eventually, he went and we were finally able to cross. With about a mile left, Miss Bear started to whine. I trudged along for the final stretch, put the bike away and the second I entered the house, my eyes started to sting from sweat washing into them from my forehead. Not just stinging but burning and itching like crazy.

Blinded by watering eyes and a running nose, I put Miss Bear down for her nap and groped through the medicine cabinet. I dumped a half bottle of Visine into each eyeball. Then I staggered to a chair and collapsed into a lifeless heap, feeling like Monday had dropped a piano on top of me.

It was a bad Monday. I suppose things could have been worse. Someone could have died...

I'm recovering. Tuesday, I approached the coffee pot and successfully brewed a batch.  I'm finally able to write about it.

I'm thinking that I'll be able to approach my bike again by tomorrow without shuddering. 

Maybe.