Most people dread Mondays. I have the opposite problem. For me, Monday is a reprieve, a return to fluorescent calm. While others drag themselves back to office chairs, I sink gratefully into mine, knowing that the weekend is finally over.

This past Saturday began with my husband’s plan to take our eight-year-old daughter rafting in Moab. The river was classified as “technical,” which meant she had to prove she could follow instructions. This is the same child whose educational career thus far has been devoted to cultivating defiance. Public school has carefully nurtured her talents, ensuring she meets every request with dramatic resistance.

We spent the entire day testing obedience. “Pick this up.” Refusal. “Do it again.” Stalemate. Each task took five repetitions, three threats, and one ultimatum: comply or stay home. Eventually, the fear of missing the trip overpowered her creative objections, but only briefly.

Sunday morning brought the final performance: shrieking, throwing objects, a collapse so theatrical it could have been staged for a Greek tragedy. My husband, realizing that rafting with her might end in a drowning (possibly his own) left without her. I sent her to church with my father-in-law, hoping organized religion might succeed where I had failed. 

Meanwhile, one of my dogs, recovering from cancer and a leg amputation, trembled on the verge of a seizure. The other dog intervened heroically, performing the duties of a service animal with no prior training, while I contemplated a cardiac episode of my own.

I remembered a massage appointment. Late. I arrived to be told by the therapist that I should “watch a movie or read a good book” in order to relax. I left wondering if he billed extra for such insight. 

The grandparents, drained of life force, called me to announce that their hospitality for the cherished granddaughter had officially expired. So, the afternoon was spent retrieving my daughter, who loudly preferred to remain indefinitely at her grandparents’ house where the hosts had by then been reduced to inanimate objects. Once home, she disappeared again until I tracked her down like a fugitive. My husband called from Moab to inform me that he had botched a crucial work project — one I now needed to fix.

That night, the dog paced until dawn. Just as he fell asleep, my husband’s four roosters began announcing the new day with the enthusiasm of Archimedes running naked through the streets of Syracuse and shouting “Eureka.”

At six, I took a shower. By 6:15, I was making coffee. At 6:25, a message arrived from my daughter’s teacher, neatly listing her Friday misdeeds. From 6:30 to 7:00, I devoted myself to the task of waking her up.

At 7:00, she finally opened her eyes. What followed was a fashion war: several outfit changes, each rejected with escalating drama. She had nothing to wear — a statement that made me apprehensive of the teenage years ahead. The final standoff centered on her shorts, which hovered dangerously above the fingertip rule. She yanked them down with exaggerated force to prove compliance, only for them to creep back up the moment she moved. I won that fight. Rules, in my dictionary, are to be followed.

At 7:20, my husband called with a to-do list for a day. That is what you get when you are in a family business.

Then the chicken feed was delivered — Amazon fulfilling its promise at the very last minute of the 4-to-8 am next-day delivery window. I carried it into the coop. While I poured it, Tino, the rooster with the most obvious sociopathic tendencies, launched himself onto my head. My glasses flew off. My head hit the chicken feeder. As I felt the bump rising, I found myself oddly grateful for bangs. Blind, I crawled through the run, hands sweeping through hay laced with chicken droppings, while he circled like a feathered executioner. When I finally retrieved my glasses, I emerged with hair full of chicken droppings, and submitted to my second shower of the morning.

I fed the dogs. I forgot to feed myself. My coffee went cold.

By the time I arrived at my desk, cup of drive-through coffee in hand, I felt the peculiar peace that only Monday can bring.

Weekends, I’ve decided, should come with a warning: “Side effects may include exhaustion, poultry-related trauma, and longing for the sound of an office printer.” U