Monday, Monday (or do-be-do-be-do)

A couple nights ago I saw the end of a show on PBS about Cass Elliot of The Mamas and The Papas, and so I have the song "Monday, Monday" drifting through my head. I don't know the words, but the melody is there. It's a beautiful blue, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky, breezy, chilly, Monday. In fact, it almost--but not quite--feels like winter. A great day for making homemade soup. It doesn't feel like April for a change. Maybe winter is on the way for a bit and we can have a fire in the wood stove tonight, we've had so few this winter.

Today I have an impromptu day off, not entirely impromptu as my husband, Scott, planned it last Friday, but impromptu in the sense that Monday's are usually a day we spend together working on a project. We clean and/or organize something before we relax and make supper together later in the day. This day was planned because he had errands to take care of and he's giving me a reward for recently writing a Quarterly Report (for Medicaid) for my foster care provider job. Thank-you notes from Christmas have been mailed and no other obligations need to be done at the moment. Relief.

My day off began after my husband left this morning, taking our client with him on his journey of errands. He called a while ago, to check-in, and asked what I'm doing with my day. Short of helping Emerson (our youngest son) with his math homework, I had to admit that I haven't accomplished any one great thing, but I have enjoyed myself. I've been straightening my office, I've read blogs and investigated OpenCourseWare Consortium where you can take a free class (not for credit) in a variety of subjects from MIT or UC-Berkeley, or even a class in Peace Studies at the Univ. of Notre Dame. Listen to podcasts of lectures from numerous universities at open culture . I'm contemplating what I'd like to do next and taking a college course doesn't sound half bad. I could take one to enrich my brain without any financial commitment (or term papers to write!). It could serve as a barometer to whether I wanted to go back to school or just liked the idea of expanding my horizons and learning something new (which I've always enjoyed).

This feeling that you have to get something done, something measurable to show for your time, is part of life living in the U.S. of A. You're not supposed to just sit and do nothing. Heaven forbid you "waste" your time and have little to show for it. It reminds me of something I read, I don't remember the source (but it could have been from a Buddhist publication), that went like this: "do. be. do-be-do-be-do." The last several weeks have been full of "do," now I aim to revel in "be" for the rest of the first month of 2007.

Before I exit to make a pot of homemade soup (chickpea vegetable noodle?), I wanted to leave you with the opening line to that song wandering through my head:

"Monday Monday, so good to me,
Monday morning', it was all I hoped it would be...."