People often ask me how I can hate Mondays, after all I don’t work so I haven’t got the mundane tasks to contend with. Such as the commute: having to leave the house a half hour earlier than is actually necessary, just incase some idiot who got his driver’s licence in the bottom of a cereal box, decides he’s going to drive on the same road as you, at the same time and is going in your direction – slowly! Or even, just having to gather the strength to drag yourself out of bed at an un-holy hour, after two days of no alarm clocks.
However, even though I do not have these sorts of challenges to contend with, Monday is a day that signifies just one thing: the weekend is over.
Weekends are important to me. It is not about recuperating after a week of work, nor is it about spending the nights getting drunk and passing out. Weekends are my family time. Many of you who know me personally are very aware that I have a beautiful eight year old boy (*beams with pride at this fact*) who I have raised almost single-handedly. However, he used to go to his dads every weekend. When he started full-time school, I was finding that I wasn’t getting to see him as often as I would have liked. Yes, I had him five days a week, but it felt like I was doing all the “boring stuff” such as the school run, the homework, the dinner etc. And although every moment with your child is precious in every way, I longed to take him places, have fun (without time restrictions due to him having to go to bed early so he is bright and alert for school the next day), or even just to have a day “vegging out” on the sofa and doing nothing but watching movies all day.
Before he started full-time school we would spend hours playing. I ignored the dishes, I ignored the mountain of washing that I would have to plow through. I ignored everything that was not important, and put all my time and effort into being with my boy. We would colour (I love colouring!) we would read books (Ben loved books and thankfully he still does, which shows as he is an excellent reader *beam*) we would play cars out in the garden, or even just take a trip to town. It was me and Ben against the world!
So, you can imagine my feeling of utter emptiness when he was at school everyday. Thankfully my wishes came true and now I have Ben every other weekend, and its awesome! Even when he spends all day playing outside with his friends, it still fills me with happiness knowing that he is close by.
My life revolves around my boy (as it should with any parent), so when Monday comes and its time to get back to the usual routine that centres around school times, I can’t help but feel a little deflated. We are in the second week of the Easter Holidays; it’s fantastic having Ben around so much. But it will soon be over and school will begin once again…
