Mandatory Mondays

*Mandatory Mondays*

They roll around every week, whether you're ready or not. Even as a "non-working" full-time mommy, these mandatory Mondays are daunting. "Non-working" but "full-time mommy," what an oxymoron. Or maybe I'm a moron and I should be cleaning something with oxi-clean instead? I just don't know these days. I sit here and type and wonder how to support us from home. Then I wonder why I'm just wondering and not doing. Or AM I doing? Am I? I hope so.

So these mandatory Mondays always follow lazy Sundays, every damned time. And ya know what? Even though I have no "job" to get to by 9, I have no power lunches scheduled unless you count wrangling against a 16 month old's power struggle to escape his highchair, these mandatory Mondays hit hard. They remind me of the mainstream that I somehow crawled out of, covered with muck and clutching a lone piece of driftwood... I try not to listen to the many "legitimate" voices like family, "friends" and "authorities" that insist that I MUST jump back into that mainstream if I want to survive, if I want my son to survive in this world. Which is ironic, since I find the mainstream a threat in itself.

There has to be another way, there just has to. Why should I have to sell my soul to work for someone else instead of myself, why should I have to sellout just so I can then pay most of my earnings for yet someone else to raise my child? How can I find a way to become truly self sufficient? Somehow, I'm led to write even though I know the whole "starving artist" fate all too well...

Mandatory Mondays make me maudlin, missing mental-health mundane days... Or even a manic Monday would be nice, that creative rush that would have the house all tidy and a novella written and the baby entertained and dinner ready all before noon. But nope. Here I sit, staring at the computer monitor, cursing this Mandatory Monday. Cursing my nervous stomach that prevents me from jump-starting the day with coffee. Cursing the pill that I reluctantly yet gratefully swallow for relief instead. Oh, it's a "bitter pill to swallow."

I remember how I got here. I try to forget. I try to ignore the significance of this past weekend, our "fake wedding anniversary," another blog, another monday perhaps... I fail at forgetting this weekend two years ago and how happy I was then. How all my dreams seemed to manifest in a glorious promising future when Mondays were magnificent and there was another set of helping hands that I trusted to pull me out of the mainstream and that I believed when they painted a picture of everything I'd ever desired. Those same hands were also pulling wool over my eyes at the time and have since pushed me, pulled me, and provoked me. Those hands are out of my face now but they still push buttons, like sinister puppet masters that won't give up. Those hands that pulled me out of the mainstream and took away my flotation device, my driftwood, in the name of "you won't need this anymore." Well, those same hands have now pushed me back in, wool still over my eyes, steel wool in disguise... I float on down the river and pull myself out this time. Now I look at my precious son's own tiny hands reaching up to me, looking to me for everything, EVERYTHING. I don't want to fail him. I don't want to fail me.

Mandatory Mondays. Can I get a hall pass today? No???

**sneaks out the backdoor while noone is looking, runs like mad to the nearest non-mainstream with son in tow and skips rocks the rest of the day, counting the ripples, and soaking up the sun, my son**

Mandatory Mondays can suck my wind. I'm gonna go fly a kite.