Monday, Monday, so good to me

Monday was a ridiculously perfect day, one of the ones that makes you suspect there might be a deity other than Oprah at work in the world. In DC, the temps reached into the 70s, launching pasty folk out into the sunshine. With their pasty kids, of course. I cared not. Monday was the kind of pseudo-spring day that makes me want to throw my panties in the air with some Mary Tyler Moore zest.

I did none of the things I promised myself I’d do – the hardwoods are missing their Murphy’s and I’m pretty sure the cats’ nails have started to curl into corkscrews – but both will wait.

The day began as it always does, with a soda of gargantuan size that makes tourists stop to take photos. I sat in a café with its doors open, writing long overdue letters. I love to write letters. There’s something about getting a handwritten communication that makes your heart rise, makes you run to the apartment a little faster with anticipation. I have great respect for folks who take a moment to make you feel good with the handwritten word.* Better yet if they can do it on unique stationery, the kind that keeps me on Etsy.com more hours than I should wishing I had either a million dollars or an ounce of design talent.

Lunch was eaten outside, and when I discovered a market with pesto pasta salads and freshly-baked breads, I carefully reattached my head to its proper place. I sat in the sunshine and ate ham and brie on a baguette with yet another Diet Coke, all the while making up stories about those around me. The two women lunching to my right who had just enough tension in their conversation to make me think there’s an academic or romantic competition between them. The man sitting by himself facing the sun with his eyes closed, cramming for an exam or trying to avoid it altogether? The girl in the sundress, immaculately coiffed, out for the day and quite possibly a perfect run-in with him.

The rest of the day was as it should have been. Checking out a new card store and finding the perfect gift for a friend’s upcoming birthday. Buying cigarettes after I tried to shrug off a man's request for coins with the “I’ve only got a credit card on me” response. Touche, persistent homeless guy. Buying ingredients to make a spicy pork tenderloin and others to whip up a curry. And drinking simply glorious amounts of fountain soda Diet Coke.

Of course the hardwoods are sporting a strange film and the cats are starting to walk on their knuckles, but there’s always the weekend for that.



* This does not count the time someone FedExed me hate mail in the pre-Internet years. Carry on.