Well, They Can't All Be Winners

It's Monday.  I'm going to let you in on a secret about me: I actually like Mondays. 

Of course, I didn't like Mondays when I had a regular, 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday job.  Back then Mondays felt like some sort of cruel machine that came to your bed and slapped you in the face, mechanically pried open your eyelids, removed you from your warm cocoon of slumber, and threw your half-asleep body into a pool of ice water. 

But now that I'm a suburban housewife schlub, I kind of like Mondays.  Mondays feel like a return to the natural order of things.  And since my job kind of involves a sort of 24/7 low-grade stress level, it's nice to know that on Mondays everybody else is working, too.  When you're spending Saturdays doing the same thing you do all the other days, you feel resentful.  Mondays are the great equalizers. 

I always feel a little more disciplined on Mondays.  I'm going to the gym!  I'm going to eat oatmeal for breakfast.  I'm cooking all three meals at home, and they are going to be healthful, dammit!  I'm catching up on the laundry.  I'll have the dishwasher emptied by 8 a.m.!

The days when I can go to bed at night feeling like I did everything right that day, those days are likely to be Mondays.

This particular Monday I started off doing Spin class at the gym.  Nothing says "atonement for my weekend eating sins" like Monday-morning Spin class.  If you've never done Spin, let me paint the picture for you: You're on a stationary bike, pedaling fast, with the resistance turned up to simulate riding up a giant muddy hill against the wind.  Just when you're about to die, the instructor tells you to turn the resistance up.  And that is the first five minutes. 

Spin pushes me to my outer limits of endurance, and probably beyond them to a point that's unsafe.  I suspect the whole unsafe thing because Spin usually still has an exhausting effect on me the next day.  I can really only do Spin once a week. 

BUT ... According to the Weight Watchers website, a person of my particular fatness can earn back 10 points by doing a 45-minute Spin class.  To give you a reference frame, that is 1/3 of the daily points I'm allowed to eat.  Which means, technically, I should be able to eat 33% more each day that I do Spin. 

In the interests of accuracy, I will say that I usually save those points for another day when a restaurant and a lot of inappropriate food choices are involved.  For today, I made myself a lunch consisting of a Super Cheesy Salad of Cheesiness.  See, in my refrigerator I had some full-fat, five-year-aged sharp cheddar from the farmer's market, as well as some grocery store Gorgonzola.  Servings of a hard cheese like cheddar are measured in ounces, one ounce being a 1-inch square cube, so being the good Weight Watcher that I am, I actually busted out a ruler and measured my allotted cheese square.  The Gorgonzola is crumbled, of course, and can be measured in a measuring cup.  So, I threw those two fatty cheeses in with some lettuce, raspberries, and a fat-free raspberry vinaigrette, and that was my lunch.

I have no idea why I just told you all that. 

Oh, I know why!  Because I have a really graceful segue from talking about cheese to talking about my career.  See, I first got into aged sharp cheddars when I bought them from a cheese seller that came to the farmer's market outside my old workplace.  On my last day of work, I informed the cheese guy that I would not be coming around anymore because I quit my job.  This led to the usual conversation about where I was headed next, career-wise.  I said that I was going to be a stay-at-home mom, but I hoped to be a writer.  The cheese guy said that he liked to hire creative types to sell his cheeses at the various farmer's markets, and he asked if I might be interested. 

You guys, I was so interested.  I followed up via email a couple of times, but they never got back to me.  So, I never became a cheese-seller, and I still don't have any paid employment today. 

And ... it's time for me to do some work.  I can feel it.  I want something part-time, or else freelance of the work-from-home variety.  Those sorts of gigs are hard to find using online databases, because I think they tend to be more of a word-of-mouth thing.  I've considered just putting out a general "Who has a job for me?" call on Facebook or Twitter, but it just feels too desperate.  Also, I have 19 followers on Twitter, so that's not the way to reach people. 

I spent the morning browsing jobs online.  I didn't really find anything.  Now I'm sort of mentally and physically exhausted.  So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and finish Pretty Little Liars now.