Call Me a Monday

I have a friend, a newly married young man in his early twenties, who's a Friday. When asked how much he loves the day, he replied, "I actually love Fridays so much that many times I prefer Thursday to Sunday." Great. He looks forward to the weekend like I look forward to arriving early at a doctor's appointment: when else do I get to sit quietly and enjoy someone else paying for my wi-fi? But I digress.

When I get home on Friday afternoons, I am faced with at least a week's worth of laundry and dishes and two little boys who want to jump on all the furnature. Today, for example, I had the pleasure of washing six loads of laundry and digging under a giant pile of half-empty plastic children's cups in search of a fork that didn't require attention from a biohazard team. That was after I got to clean up the pound of salt Boy 2 dumped on the floor, but before the nightmare which was brushing Boy 1's teeth. I imagine my friend mentioned above went home and played several hours of Xbox. Sometimes I desperately miss my twenties.

Now, Mondays are like a tiny slice of Unitarian heaven. After a full weekend of washing, cooking, cleaning, rinsing, organizing and changing things, I gleefully leave my *adorable* children in the care of qualified professionals who have voluntarily chosen to spend their working lives tending very small people, while I get to morph into a Professional Woman of Experience and Specialized  Skill. As a ProWESS, I get to comand armies of medium-sized people as they work as playwrights, researchers, authors, team-managers and historians; I get to consult and advise grown adults as they develop their craft, take responsible risks, and push the boundaries of a traditional education; I get to learn from other ProWESSes in order to grow as a professional in my field. I lead. I inspire. I am in my element.

At home, I am ruled by a duo of tiny humans whose primary purpose in life is to ask for money, eat my food, and eventually choose my nursing home. I pour every fiber of my being into the hope that one day, in the far distant future, these two beings will function successfully in a world that does not yet exisit. I get to worry and struggle and hope until there is nothing left, until I am a shriveled shell of humanity. And for all that, I don't even get paid, unless you count Cheerios smashed in the carpet as payment, which I don't.

So come back quickly, Monday. I shall look forward longingly to your swift return, when I get to put on respectable clothes and eat an entire meal without any tiny, grubby fingers trying to stake their claim on my plate. In the meantime...

"Do you have any plans for the three-day weekend?" another friend asks.

"I am guessing that I will probably have to go to the park," I said.

"That sounds nice," she replied.

I wonder if I can get her to go for me while I drink coffee alone at Starbucks....