Weekday Mornings

The most difficult part of a weekday is the morning.( No surprises there.)

1) We have a very zealous garbage collecting system. The garbage people will keep ringing the bell at the crack of dawn and threaten to break down the door if you don’t mollify them with some garbage. So even if you’ve eaten out the previous day and have nothing in your trash, you make garbage (just chuck in a few newspapers) so you can slip them a little something to keep things quiet.
2) Then right when you’ve slipped back into your soft, warm bed and drifted off to sleep again your maid comes a-ringing. I am convinced she counts off ten minutes after the housekeeping people leave. She NEVER comes with them.
3) After you’ve let your cleaning lady in, and exchanged a few heated gestures (pick up a spoon and make a disgusting face to mean ‘it was cleaner before you got to it’ and she points to her nose and then to me to say ‘I completely agree, but what’s your point?’) you slip back between the sheets and promise yourself you’ll positively spring out of bed in 5 minutes.
4) Of course you don’t and the sheer lateness of the hour galvanizes you into activity the next time you wake up. You somehow manage to get everything done (or do you?) and close the door behind you (or do you?)
5) On the way to the office you realize:

· It was shampoo day and you haven’t.(shampooed)

· That’s Ok, because if you tie your hair up it doesn’t show that it hasn’t been shampooed.

· No it’s not because you’ve left your scrunchy on the dressing table. All you have is a pin, so you stick it into the side of your head and check the effect in your little mirror.

· You wish hats were allowed in the office. You consider taking up Islam just so you weren’t miserable on such days.

· After you’re done bemoaning your hair, it strikes you that you may have left the gas on. Did I, didn’t I?

· And the taps? ‘I’m pretty sure I left that one tap running…it’ll flood the apartment’.

· ‘If only I had checked everything before shutting the door’ you think. The door!!!? Did I close the door? By this time you’re ready to turn the car around and head back home to check all of the above.

· Of course you can’t because you have three other disgruntled cab mates looking daggers at your greasy head. (Don’t ask why they do that, short of distributing sweets I’ve tried hard to win them over.)

So you worry all day about your apartment, and only hope the waterlogged rooms will prevent the fire from completely ravaging it. And that the thieves will be deterred from stealing anything with so many natural disasters going on. “Bad working conditions, boys, let’s rob some body else’s house or pick up a few passengers in our autos.”

And then you return home and (in most cases), find that except for some nauseatingly badly washed crockery (note to myself: Point outside the window and then the utensils to say “Those monkeys would do a better job than you!” when the cleaning lady comes the next day) everything is fine with your home.

Aah, home sweet home. There’s no other feeling like coming back to an undisturbed apartment and settling down to your daily fix of TV. Easily the best part of the whole ordeal that is a weekday.

J