Monday September 21

I don't know what it is about Mondays that makes me want to write. Maybe it's a way to proscrastinate getting ready for work. Maybe it's a way to rebel against work. Instead of getting there early, or on time, I'll take my time and write my heart out. It's a way of survival. Emotional survival.

So if you haven't noticed, I suppose I am the serious type. Always pondering life, its purpose, trying to analyze myself, trying to find myself. So last Monday as I caught the elevator, maybe I wrote this already, the maintenance guy that I'm cool with, held the doors open for me. We exchanged the usual greetings but I made a frown and said how I hate Mondays. He has a harder job than me. He works the parking lot and is kind of like the handy man in the building. He told me "At least you have a job. At least you're not in the hospital." I realized what a fool I looked like. I stepped out of the elevator on my floor and told him he was a wise man (not in a smart aleck way). He made me realize how I can be so grumpy!!

So now another Monday has arrived. And I have less than an hour to get ready and to get to work. But still I take my time. This is my time. I usually wake up early. The mornings are my favorite. The quiet, the stillness of the morning before sunrise. Knowing most are still sound asleep. Just me and my cat. I make my coffee and this is my favorite time of day. I listen to Ben Harper right now - a CD I purchased at a garage sale on Sunday morning. Another favorite thing of mine to do. It was funny. One of the guys selling his stuff spoke to me in Spanish and told me how much the CDs were that I was looking at. I understood his Spanish. I am after all an LA native. I am often mistaken for a Latina and this humors me a lot. I usually try not to disappoint. I nod my head as if in understanding and respond in whatever Spanish I know. But sometimes the other person continues in a tirade of fast spoken Spanish that I have no idea what he or she is saying. And at such time, I try to escape the situation, for fear of being found out that I am an imposter. That I am not Latina.

I'm totally off topic this morning and writing random stuff. So pardon me my tangential escapades. I just don't want to go to work. Despite what the handy man reminded me of last week. I want to stay home. I want to continue looking through my childhood pictures that I picked up from my uncle and aunt's. I want to continue to reminisce about a time long past. I want to remember what I was like back then. I want to create a collage of pictures and put them up on my wall. I want to write all day. I want to finish Brothers Karamazov. I'm almost done. I'm at the part where the defense attorney will finally speak.

I want to recommend Malena - another movie to reach my all time favorite list. An Italian movie. You have to watch with subtitles. It's a beautiful film that made me sob at the end. Why? Aside from being a melodramatic, emotional, hopeless romantic - to me one major theme of the movie was unrequited love. Oh how it moved me to tears. I can't wait to watch it again. I keep thinking about the movie too. That's when I know it has touched something inside of me.

But alas time has caught up with me. I want to eat more and finish my coffee. Then I have to go to work. So until next time, arrivederci.