And a bit of Monday morning mirth. It will wear off, as the day wears on, but starts with a bit of a pop like a Christmas cracker. Streamers and a little gift inside!
Mondays are my favorite day. Whatever went wrong last week is forgotten. I am new. The rough skin of last week is sloughed off, the bruises to the ego have faded, and I approach the week with optimism. A new and optimistic “to-do” list, electronic or paper–maybe both–awaits. There are ideas to be shared, and reams to be written in another chapter or two of my life.
Monday is a day for the inner and outer journey, as they say of Swedish pilgrimage. Mondays are good days for appointments, and they are also good days for slow steady rains, and working indoors, alone, and with focus. This is a glorious Monday, and appropriately busily scheduled. Were it gloomy and drizzly, I would prefer quietly working alone at home.
This is an illusion, but as I cherish it week after week, please permit me: I will pick up what I dropped. I will not have to “humbly repent” the things I have left undone next Sunday. Truth be told, I humbly repent what I have left undone far too often, and quite infrequently in church. I will work harder than I did last week. Disruptions will be fewer, and somehow dross will be turned into gold. And all that without visiting the now-closed Alchemist Brewery in Waterbury, Vermont. (Beer review coming up in another post, but the Brewery is temporarily closed, so don’t rush up there.) I will disregard health issues for today, and begin the week in unperturbed and uninterrupted by unwanted appointments. I do like Mondays!
When I take a morning walk down the path, I may see the small woodpecker, hopping from branch to branch in the neighbor’s bush, only an arm’s-length away. Though I continue on the path by the brook, I will never again see the albino squirrel my son and I saw one early morning as I walked him to grade school. We only saw it once, and we were the only two ever to see it. I don’t put it down to a shared hallucination. But if I had to guess years later, I’d say we saw the squirrel on a Monday.
Ode to Monday:
Monday, the week’s newly opened blossom.
Not shy, but bright and sturdy.
Brazen, unashamed.
Bustling Monday.
Busy squirrels hiding nuts.
Brisk breeze Monday.
Tree tops swaying gently,
Clouds not racing, but
Purposefully traversing the sky.
Fir Tree in Monday Mood by Circespeaks
Circespeaks 
I KNEW there were albino squirrels. I saw one in our neck of the woods a couple of years ago. It made such an impression I put it in my book.
Chapter 4 of Pride’s Children has:
What was a white cat doing on the cord that hung the birdfeeder from the overhead balcony?
…
She reached the window, squinted. Not a cat. An incredibly rarer gift: an albino squirrel. An omen? Of what? It behaved like all its kind, baffled by the clear plastic hemisphere protecting the seeds. It didn’t know it was special. Recessive trait. Pity.
—
I can still remember the day and where I saw the white squirrel.
It did seem like an omen when K and I saw our white squirrel. He remembers it clearly, too. We kept looking for its siblings, but they must have been ordinary grey or black squirrels. You are the first person I know who has also seen one! Unicorns, anyone 🙂