Bob and Karen Had It Right

I hate Mondays. Always have, since the second grade. For forty years I’ve suffered from a raging case of Sunday afternoon malaise. Nausea begins its swirl around 4:00 p.m., when I hear the clock chime and realize the weekend is nearly done.

I don’t have a reason to hate Mondays. I have a decent job, one that allows me to be creative. I like my boss and coworkers. I work in an environment where I can be any one of my selves — the outrageous girl, or the arty tart, or the sociable hermit.

But I do. To quote that demigod Bob Geldof, during his tenure with the Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays.”

Did you know that Bob Geldof read the news wire that inspired "I Don't Like Mondays" in the WRAS studios? 'Tis true.

I run late nearly every Monday morning. I rarely sleep beyond 7:30 on weekends (I’m a world-class napper). But it’s all I can do to get out of bed by 7:45 on the moon’s day. I stay up until at least 1:00 a.m. Sunday, trying to squeeze in every precious second of weekend freedom, so I’m dead tired when that damn screeching alarm announces the birth of another work week.

And my Monday mornings are peppered with meetings — thirty minutes in a meeting, half an hour at my desk, another thirty in a meeting, and so on until early afternoon. I hate meetings.

WARNING: If you have bad news to deliver, save it for Tuesday. I don’t always handle it well on Mondays. As Ms. Carpenter sings in “Rainy Days and Mondays,” they always get me down.

So I do what I can do to survive. Buy baubles online. Flirt via e-mail. Daydream about my secluded life as a writer. Concentrate on brainless tasks. Listen to my dance and alt/rap playlists (nothing like The Replacements and Public Enemy and The Ramones to soothe my Monday soul).

But sometimes Mondays bring surprises, something that chases away my blues. I came home tonight to Oh-OK’s complete recordings. Lively, alive Athens pop, finally on CD. And I danced as hard as I could to “Lilting” and “Person” and “Such and Such.” I haven’t danced to these songs in years, maybe decades. I feel twenty years younger. And this Monday ends in ninety minutes.

And just this moment I bought a ticket to tomorrow's Tom Waits show — at face value. Craigslist never lets me down.

So, maybe sometimes Monday is a good day. At least the evenings can be.