Just a thought for a Monday morning. Ah Monday Monday. Why is it most people hate Mondays? Is it because most people are not doing what they love I wonder? In my case – I actually am doing what I love but I still have that ‘Monday morning’ feeling sometimes.

I think it is a throw back to school. You see I hated school.

Oh – I was clever enough to be able to learn and regurgitate vast sums of information that I may – but probably wouldn’t – ever need again unless I entered as a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire – or other such game show. I am also lucky enough to be quick witted and intelligent enough to attempt a reasonable answer to most teacher questions. So I managed – largely – to stay on the right side of the teachers and only managed a lunchtime detention once for missing a lesson (long story).

But I still hated school – I am not good at regimentation, don’t like being told what to do and don’t like being made to learn stuff I had no interest in – which to be fair was most things I ‘learnt’ at school. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like history or physics, or even maths (no have to be honest pretty much hate maths) but what I didn’t like was the way they were taught. And there was nothing I could do about that.

However, what I have learnt in life and I wish I knew it then, was you can’t do anything about what happens to you in life – but you can do something about how you feel about it, how you react to it, how much you allow it to affect your day / year / life.

For example. Yesterday was Mothers Day. I cooked for the family including my own Mum. Some of my colleagues thought this was awful – that I ‘should’ have been being looked after. I hate the word ‘should’ – someone ought to ban it. It would be lovely to be pampered of course, however I actually can’t think of a way I would prefer to spend Mothers Day than to have my family round, cook for people who adore and appreciate my cooking, chat, laugh, debate and generally hang out with my favourite people. What could be better?

Now a few things happened yesterday that were challenging. After getting up early to an empty house (kids out with other half various places), I started cooking. When I had things at a certain point I was going to shower and get dressed up and then come down to dress the table and finish the prep.

Thats when I realised the fridge freezer wasn’t working. So I calmly moved the freezer stuff to the chest freezer in the garage and the perishables to the fridge in the garage (thank god I didn’t get rid of them when I bought the new fridge freezer in 2006). Then I realised the fridge in the garage was also not working, as was the freezer in the garage, and my daughters PC in the dining room was making a funny noise. No worries I thought – I’ll go have a shower and by then the other half will be home and we’ll decide what to do. I turned on the shower – no hot water.

Now by this time I could have been having a bad day – if I had chosen to. Sod that I thought – the garage is cold enough that the perishables wont perish, the chest freezer will stay frozen for hours and if we need to we’ll ring all our friends and see who has spare freezer space. It will be fine. And do you know what – it was. My other half got home tripped a switch in the fusebox and everything went back on. (I can be so blond at times lol). Life can only get you down if you allow it.

From now on I am deciding to love Mondays.