Like the rest of the whole country, I wake up every single Monday morning utterly surprised that my alarm clock is going off. It’s like some middle of the night intruder, except it’s actually morning and I told it to come in. But yet, somehow, I’m still puzzled by the beeping noise and not really sure where I am.

Years ago people thought it was funny to wonder why medical science or math people haven’t come up with a cure for Mondays yet. They have…it’s called unemployment. So I’m up, I’m having coffee, I’m going to work, because the alternative is to wake up, not have coffee, and move my cardboard box off the sidewalk before the commuters start heading to their offices. Just because I know it to be true, doesn’t make it any less painful.

People also started suggesting we take our cues from the animal kingdom, that if we were somehow living more like the animals in nature, we would be healthier and more at one with the universe. Do those people even KNOW the average life expectancy of many animals on the planet? Sure, for every tortoise who gets to live to be 190 years old (and who wants to be a freakin’ tortoise?), there are insects who live forty-eight hours. So let’s meet in the middle with something that is at least mammalian. Gazelles live on average ten to twelve years, and all but about thirty minutes of that life is spent looking over your shoulder for a freak lion attack. Who wants to do that? They don’t die from old age or cancer, they die from their hearts exploding under the stress of predators!

So I’m ultimately going to work on four hours’ sleep, but I’m damned grateful to do it since apparently my choices are homelessness or being eaten by something higher up on the food chain. Have a good one.