Mondays Are Hard Quotes

She was a woman who made mistakes, who sometimes cried on a Monday morning or at night alone in bed. She was a woman who often became bored with her life and found it hard to get up for work in the morning. She was a woman who more often than not had a bad hair day, who looked in the mirror and wondered why she couldn't just drag herself to the gym more often; she was a woman who sometimes questioned what reason had she to live on this planet. She was a woman who sometimes just got things wrong. On the other hand, she was a woman with a million happy memories, who knew what it was like to experience true love and who was ready to experience more life, more love and make new memories.

In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toin and suffering.

Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.

I trust the red sun setting, the leafless November trees. On Monday morning I look foward fearlessly to Friday’s eve. But humans are not as reliable as nature, as trees. I wonder if you’ll come back; I trust only that you leave.

Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living, But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day, Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

It‘s a curious fact, because Friday is a day of work and Sunday is a day for pleasure, so you would expect people to enjoy Sunday more, right? But we don’t. It’s not because we really like being in the office and can’t stand strolling in the park and having a lazy brunch. We prefer Friday to Sunday because Friday brings with it the thrill of anticipating the weekend ahead. In contrast, on Sunday the only thing to look forward to is work on Monday.

Good morning to you beautiful souls! In spite of Monday's reign, today will be a great day filled with blessings & good reports. Stay focused, stay positive & grind hard. LK

On Monday, when the sun is hot I wonder to myself a lot: “Now is it true, or is it not, “That what is which and which is what?” On Tuesday, when it hails and snows, The feeling on me grows and grows That hardly anybody knows If those are these or these are those. On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, And I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it’s true That who is what and what is who. On Thursday, when it starts to freeze And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees, How very readily one sees That these are whose—but whose are these? On

In my lifelong study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they might try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workaday lives of meaningless toil and suffering

As if I didn't have enough to worry about. My kingdom is threatened by war, extinction, or both, and the only way to solve it is to give up the only thing I've ever really wanted. Then Toraf pulls something like this. Betrays me and my sister. Galen cant imagine how things could get worse. So he's not expecting it when Emma giggles. He turns on her. "What could be funny?" She laughs so hard she has to lean into him for support. He stiffens against the urge to wrap his arms around her. Wiping tears from her eyes, she says, "He kissed me!" The confession makes her crack up all over again. "And you think that's funny?" "You don't understand, Galen," she says, the beginnings of hiccups robbing her of breath. "Obviously." "Don't you see? It worked!" "All I saw was Toraf, my sister's mate, my best friend, kissing my...my..." "Your what?" "Student." Obsession. "Your student. Wow." Emma shakes her head then hiccups. "Well, I know you're mad about what he did to Rayna, but he did it to make her jealous." Galen tries to let that sink in, but it stays on the surface like a bobber. "You're saying he kissed you to make Rayna jealous?" She nods, laugher bubbling up again. "And it worked! Did you see her face?" "You're saying he set Rayna up." Instead of me? Galen shakes his head. "Where would he get an idea like that?" "I told him to do it." Galen's fists ball against his will. "You told him to kiss you?" "No! Sort of. Not really though." "Emma-" "I told him to play hard to get. You know, act uninterested. He came up with kissing me all on his own. I'm so proud of him!" She thinks Toraf is a genius for kissing her. Great. "Did...did you like it?" "I just told you I did, Galen." "Not his plan. The kiss." The delight leaves her face like a receding tide. "That's none of your business, Highness." He runs a hand through his hair to keep from shaking her. And kissing her. "Triton's trident, Emma. Did you like it or not?" Taking several steps back, she throws her hands on her hips. "Do you remember Mr. Pinter, Galen? World history?" "What does that have to do with anything?" "Tomorrow is Monday. When I walk into Mr. Pinter's class, he won't ask me how I liked Toraf's kiss. In fact, he won't care what I did for the entire weekend. Because I'm his student. Just like I'm your student, remember?" Her hair whips to the side as she turns and walks away with that intoxicating saunter of hers. She picks up her towel and steps into her flip-flops before heading up the hill to the house. "Emma, wait." "I'm tired of waiting, Galen. Good night.

Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up

I find some small, twisted comfort in thinking that perhaps we used each other. Him, for a glimpse into what it would be like to live a life entirely different from the one he'd been raised to desire, and me for the steady diet of angst and emotional damage that seemed to make me better, sharper, like a sword against a whetstone. I was his intellectual escape from a long parade of pretty, empty girls... and he was my drug of choice -- unhealthy, probably lethal, but ultimately so addictive it was hard to turn away. The problem, of course, with this theory of mutual exploitation, is that it is the deepest of lies. There was nothing equal or mutual about the way we used each other. I barely scratched his surface while he sliced me limb from limb. There's no comfort in that. None at all.

After that, the men in the room rushed for the exits, apparently to sell their shares in Bear Stearns. By the time Alan Greenspan arrived to speak, there was hardly anyone who cared to hear what he had to say. The audience was gone. By Monday, Bear Stearns was of course gone, too, sold to J.P. Morgan for $2 a share.*

Grace seems easy like Sunday morning while the other girls seem hard to deal with like Monday morning.

She had taken a degree in Domestic Science in a college in northern England, and used notebooks from her class to order the household’s meals. Sunday: roast beef. Monday: collops with sippets of toast (mince). Tuesday: beef stew. Wednesday: brawn. Thursday: steak and kidney pie. Friday: stewed oxheart. Saturday: tripe and onions. To be a white housewife was hardly arduous.

Sometimes, when I’m bored, I can’t help but think what my life would be like if I hadn’t written the book. Monday, I would’ve played bridge. And tomorrow night, I’d be going to the League meeting and turning in the newsletter. Then on Friday night, Stuart would take me to dinner and we’d stay out late and I’d be tired when I got up for my tennis game on Saturday. Tired and content and . . . frustrated. Because Hilly would’ve called her maid a thief that afternoon, and I would’ve just sat there and listened to it. And Elizabeth would’ve grabbed her child’s arm too hard and I would’ve looked away, like I didn’t see it. And I’d be engaged to Stuart and I wouldn’t wear short dresses, only short hair, or consider doing anything risky like write a book about colored housekeepers, too afraid he’d disapprove. And while I’d never lie and tell myself I actually changed the minds of people like Hilly and Elizabeth, at least I don’t have to pretend I agree with them anymore.

I'm having a sort of hard time paying attention because my automated teller has started speaking to me, sometimes actually leaving weird messages on the screen, in green lettering, like “Cause a Terrible Scene at Sotheby's” or “Kill the President” or “Feed Me a Stray Cat,” and I was freaked out by the park bench that followed me for six blocks last Monday evening and it too spoke to me. Disintegration—I'm taking it in stride.

How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew that cups had to be washed up and put away after drinking, and knew that a Monday of work follows a Sunday in the water meadows, and that old age with its distorting-mirror memories follows youth and its raw pleasures, but that it's quite impossible to love such people, for what we want in love is release from our beliefs, not confirmation in them. That is where the 'courage of love' comes in - to have the courage to commit yourself to something you don't believe, because it is what - for the moment, anyway - thrills your by its audacity. (Some of the phrasing of this is odd, but it would make a good poem if it had any words...)

At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in.

float: they had only one day in which to smooth out their wrinkles, their crow’s feet, the bitter lines made by a hard week’s work. One day only. They felt the minutes flowing between their fingers; would they have time to store up enough youth to start anew on Monday morning?

It is remarkable, however, that at the very lowest point of Kant's depression, when he became perfectly incapable of conversing with any rational meaning on the ordinary affairs of life, he was still able to answer correctly and distinctly, in a degree that was perfectly astonishing, upon any question of philosophy or of science, especially of physical geography, [Footnote: Physical Geography, in opposition to Political.] chemistry, or natural history. He talked satisfactorily, in his very worst state, of the gases, and stated very accurately different propositions of Kepler’s, especially the law of the planetary motions. And I remember in particular, that upon the very last Monday of his life, when the extremity of his weakness moved a circle of his friends to tears, and he sat amongst us insensible to all we could say to him, cowering down, or rather I might say collapsing into a shapeless heap upon his chair, deaf, blind, torpid, motionless,—even then I whispered to the others that I would engage that Kant should take his part in conversation with propriety and animation. This they found it difficult to believe. Upon which I drew close to his ear, and put a question to him about the Moors of Barbary. To the surprise of everybody but myself, he immediately gave us a summary account of their habits and customs; and told us by the way, that in the word Algiers, the g ought to be pronounced hard (as in the English word gear).

If I was a color, I would be white, vast in my blankness. Pure, whole, virginal, predictable. Boring. The colors thrown at me didn't bleed into my canvas and leave a mark. The colors washed out with nothing but water. That's what made this story so hard to remember. It's hard facing a mirror and seeing all you are made of and all you couldn't absorb.

9. Your Photo Album Many people have a photo album. In it they keep memories of the happiest of times. There may be a photo of them playing by the beach when they were very young. There may be the picture with their proud parents at their graduation ceremony. There will be many shots of their wedding that captures their love at one of its highest points. And there will be holiday snapshots too. But you will never find in your album any photographs of miserable moments of your life. Absent is the photo of you outside the principal’s office at school. Missing is any photo of you studying hard late into the night for your exams. No one that I know has a picture of their divorce in their album, nor one of them in a hospital bed terribly sick, nor stuck in busy traffic on the way to work on a Monday morning! Such depressing shots never find their way into anyone’s photo album. Yet there is another photo album that we keep in our heads called our memory. In that album, we include so many negative photographs. There you find so many snapshots of insulting arguments, many pictures of the times when you were so badly let down, and several montages of the occasions where you were treated cruelly. There are surprisingly few photos in that album of happy moments. This is crazy! So let’s do a purge of the photo album in our head. Delete the uninspiring memories. Trash them. They do not belong in this album. In their place, put the same sort of memories that you have in a real photo album. Paste in the happiness of when you made up with your partner, when there was that unexpected moment of real kindness, or whenever the clouds parted and the sun shone with extraordinary beauty. Keep those photos in your memory. Then when you have a few spare moments, you will find yourself turning its pages with a smile, or even with laughter.

novels Cry Hard, Cry Fast (1955), Murdering the Wind (1956), Slam the Big Door (1960), A Flash of Green (1962), and the astonishingly good The End of the Night (1960) were among his finest work. There were also an imposing number of other paperback originals that were also first-rate crime stories—among them Dead, Low Tide (1953) and One Monday We Killed Them All (1961)

Monday night is actually Tuesday evening in the Arabic calendar since Arabic day begins with sunset. ‘The secrets of Tuesday’s darkness, coinciding with stone hard and deceased animals hurled at a human territory …’ The words he read decades ago now bloom in his memory. It was in a book from Ruem’s collection. How can he remember it so clearly? Why does he remember it? Why now?

Only twenty-seven people in Britain can explain why the day after Christmas Day is called Boxing Day, but that doesn't stop millions from marking it by staying home from work. An intriguing side effect of thus having two consecutive public holidays is that no matter what days of the week they fall on, the British can easily justify taking the whole week off. Suppose Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday, with Boxing Day on the Wednesday. Well, then, what is the point, the contemporary Bob Cratchit cries, of bother to open up the office or factory on Monday, when we all plan to knock off work by lunchtime because it's Christmas Eve? And it's hardly worth cranking up the heat for a working week that's now been whittled down to just two days. By the time we finish complaining about our ingrate in-laws and the cheesy Christmas television programs and the blatant materialism of our kids, it's time to go home for the weekend. Isn't it simpler for Mr. Scrooge to close the countinghouse until the New Year? (He can still pay us, of course.) This creative logic is a little more challenging when Christmas Day is a Thursday, but several Plumley residents had pulled it off...

She deigned to asked me how ice queens reproduce. I grinned, and her mother looked horrified. “We procreate by way of ice cubes, of course. We put them in our nests and let them incubate for the period of about four months, and when the temperature is right, we put them out to roost and let them flake off into billions of snowflakes, rather like tadpoles breaking in droves from their eggs. And that, child,” I said, with a simulacrum of glee, “is how winter is born.” “Does it hurt?” “No more than the approach of Monday does to most of the world. It is a natural process, you understand, but it is dreadful hard work.

For years, the suspicion that Mr. Putin has a secret fortune has intrigued scholars, industry analysts, opposition figures, journalists and intelligence agencies but defied their efforts to uncover it. Numbers are thrown around suggesting that Mr. Putin may control $40 billion or even $70 billion, in theory making him the richest head of state in world history. For all the rumors and speculation, though, there has been little if any hard evidence, and Gunvor has adamantly denied any financial ties to Mr. Putin and repeated that denial on Friday. But Mr. Obama’s response to the Ukraine crisis, while derided by critics as slow and weak, has reinvigorated a 15-year global hunt for Mr. Putin’s hidden wealth. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to announce another round of sanctions as early as Monday targeting Russians it considers part of Mr. Putin’s financial circle, it is sending a not-very-subtle message that it thinks it knows where the Russian leader has his money, and that he could ultimately be targeted directly or indirectly. “It’s something that could be done that would send a very clear signal of taking the gloves off and not just dance around it,” said Juan C. Zarate, a White House counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush who helped pioneer the government’s modern financial campaign techniques to choke off terrorist money.

Day One, Morning  The Dempsey Penthouse, New York On the morning the ships came, Meyer Dempsey found himself preoccupied with drugs, sex, and business. It would have been hard to believe that just six days later, only one of the three would seem to matter.  “You’re not listening to me, Heather,” he said into the phone. “I’m going to be in LA from Friday to Tuesday. I’ve already booked time with the studio on Monday. The whole reason I’m coming early is—”  Heather cut him off, probably to feed her need for a zinger more than a reply that couldn’t wait. Heather was always “on,” never really able to take a break and just be a person for once. It was one of the reasons they hadn’t been able to stay married. It was like living with a jester.  “Because you want to do the Walk

After our date on Monday, I put the heart-eyes emoji next to his name in my contacts. I mean, the boy brought me flowers and a Storm comic, and since we didn’t have time to stay for dessert at the restaurant, he brought me a small pack of Chips Ahoy! to eat on the way back to school. He earned those heart eyes. He just sent a couple of texts to guarantee that he keeps them. Do your thing tonight, Princess. Wish I could be there. I probably couldn’t pay attention to your song tho I’d be staring at you too hard Corny? Yes. But it gets a smile out of me. Before I can respond, though, he adds: I’d be staring at that ass too but you know I probably ain’t supposed to admit that. I smirk. Why you admitting it now then? His answer? Cause I bet it made you smile Just for that, I’m adding a second heart-eyes emoji to his name.

not if Shannon is over her illness.  Come, Dytyna.  We discuss your performance now." "When will we know if I'll be competing?" "We will not know until Monday when we check in at the Olympic arena.  Coach Taylor will know then." "I'm going back to the hotel to call your father, Kerri.  We plan on meeting for lunch then will head on over to the hockey arena.  Two kids in the Olympics!  Whoa.  I'll see you later."  She leaned down and gave Kerri a hug before she kissed her forehead.  "Stay out of trouble." "I can hardly get into any trouble in the Olympic village, Mom."  At almost seventeen, Kerri was still able to feel embarrassed at receiving her mother's counsel, and she thought that her mother's advice was unfounded.  The village was closed off, after all, from the rest of Turin and from the fray of the crowds that converged upon the venues.  She watched her mother walk away before she stood up and adjusted the strap

True blues ain't no new news about who's been abused For the blues is as old as my stolen soul I sang the blues when the missionaries came Passing out bibles in Jesus' name I sang the blues in the hull of the ship Beneath the sting of the slavemaster's whip I sang the blues when the ship anchored the dark My family being sold on a slave block I sang the blues being torn from my first born And hung my head and cried when my wife took his life And then committed suicide. I sang the blues on the slavemaster's plantation helping Him build his free nation I sang the blues in the cottonfield, hustlin' to make the daily yield I sang the blues when he forced my woman to beg Lord knows how I wished he was dead I sang the blues on the run, ducking the dogs and dodging the gun I sang the blues hanging from the tree in a desperate attempt to break free I sang the blues when the sun went down, cursing the master when he wasn't around I sang the blues in all these wars dying for some unknown cause I sang the blues in a high tone, low moan, loud groan, soft grunt, hard funk I sang the blues in land sea and air, about who when why and where I sang the blues in church on sunday, slaving on monday, misused on tuesday, abused on wednesday, accused on thursday, fried alive on friday, and died on saturday. Sho nuff singing the blues I sang the blues in the summer, fall winter and spring I know sho nuff the blues is my thing I sang the backwater blues, rhythm and blues, gospel blues, saint louis blues, crosstown blues, chicago blues, mississippi GODDAMN blues, the watts blues, the harlem blues, hoe blues, gut-bucket blues, funky chunky blues, i sang the up north cigarette corp blues, the down south sprung out the side of my mouth blues, I sang the blues black, i sang the blues blacker, i sang the blues blackest I SANG BOUT MY SHO NUFF BLUE BLACKNESS! from "True Blues" by the Last Poets

That’s when she saw him. Standing there on the edge of the cliff in his rain-slicked duster and weathered Stetson. She stared, numb inside. Partly from being back in this spot again, but mostly from seeing him here, now. The certainty of her decision began to sway inside her, but looking at him, loving him the way she did, she determined to follow through. James walked toward her. Handsome hardly began to describe him, especially with that half grin slowly edging up one side of his mouth. “Beg your pardon, ma’am. But do you need some help getting your luggage down?” “What are you doing here? How did you—” He pulled an envelope from his pocket. She recognized her handwriting. It was the envelope she’d mailed last night. Or thought she’d mailed. Ben Mullins . . . “I got a special delivery around midnight.” He stepped closer, the blue of his eyes turning more so in the sunlight. “Ben had a pretty good tussle with his conscience, but he finally decided this was something I might need to see before Monday.” He gave her a scolding look. “He was right.

argumentative.” “Sorry. It wasn’t on the schedule.” “Sarcasm’s also typical, but it’s unbecoming.” Susan opened her briefcase, checked the contents. “We’ll talk about all this when I get back. I’ll make an appointment with Dr. Bristoe.” “I don’t need therapy! I need a mother who listens, who gives a shit about how I feel.” “That kind of language only shows a lack of maturity and intellect.” Enraged, Elizabeth threw up her hands, spun in circles. If she couldn’t be calm and rational like her mother, she’d be wild. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” “And repetition hardly enhances. You have the rest of the weekend to consider your behavior. Your meals are in the refrigerator or freezer, and labeled. Your pack list is on your desk. Report to Ms. Vee at the university at eight on Monday morning. Your participation in this program will ensure your place in HMS next fall. Now, take my garment bag downstairs, please. My car will be here any minute.” Oh, those seeds were sprouting, cracking that fallow ground and pushing painfully through. For the first time in her life, Elizabeth looked straight

He needs to be talked to." "This is funny, but I know how to talk, too." Brian swore under his breath. "He prefers singing." "Excuse me?" "I said,he prefers singing." "Oh." Keeley tucked her tongue in her cheek. "Any particular tune? Wait, let me guess. Finnegan's Wake?" Brian''s steely-eyed stare had her laughing until she had to lean weakly against the gelding.The horse responded by twisting his head and trying to sniff her pockets for apples. "It's a quick tune," Brian said coolly, "and he likes hearing his name." "I know the chorus." Gamely Keeley struggled to swallow another giggle. "But I'm not sure I know all the words.There are several verses as I recall." "Do the best you can," he muttered and strode off.His lips twitched as he heard her launch into the song about the Dubliner who had a tippling way. When he reached Betty's box, he shook his head. "I should've known. If there's not a Grant one place, there's a Grant in another until you're tripping over them." Travis gave Betty a last pat on the shoulder. "Is that Keeley I hear singing?" "She's being sarcastic, but as long as the job's done. She's dug in her heels about grooming Finnegan." "She comes by it naturally.The hard head as well as the skill." "Never had so many owners breathing down my neck.We don't need them, do we, darling?" Brian laid his hands on Beetty's cheek, and she shook her head, then nibbled his hair. "Damn horse has a crush on you." "She may be your lady, sir, but she's my own true love.Aren't you beautiful, my heart?" He stroked, sliding into the Gaelic that had Betty's ears pricked and her body shifting restlessly. "She likes being excited before a race," Brian murmured. "What do you call it-pumped up like your American football players.Which is a sport that eludes me altogether as they're gathered into circles discussing things most of the time instead of getting on with it." "I heard you won the pool on last Monday nights game," Travis commented. "Betting's the only thing about your football I do understand." Brian gathered her reins. "I'll walk her around a bit before we take her down. She likes to parade.You and your missus will want to stay close to the winner's circle." Travis grinned at him. "We'll be watching from the rail." "Let's go show off." Brian led Betty out.

I have a good friend, let’s call him Slim Berriss, who’s devised a schedule for himself that combines practical microdosing and pre-planned 1- to 2-day treks into deeper territory. For him, this blend provides a structured approach for increasing everyday well-being, developing empathy, and intensively exploring the “other.” Here is what it looks like: Microdosing of ibogaine hydrochloride twice weekly, on Mondays and Fridays. The dosage is 4 mg, or roughly 1/200 or less of the full ceremonial dosage at Slim’s bodyweight of 80 kg. He dislikes LSD and finds psilocybin in mushrooms hard to dose accurately. Woe unto he who “microdoses” and gets hit like a freight train while checking in luggage at an airport (poor Slim). The encapsulated ibogaine was gifted to him to solve this problem. Moderate dosing of psilocybin (2.2 to 3.5 g), as ground mushrooms in chocolate, once every 6 to 8 weeks. His highly individual experience falls somewhere in the 150 to 200 mcg description of LSD by Jim later in this piece. Slim is supervised by an experienced sitter. Higher-dose ayahuasca once every 3 to 6 months for 2 consecutive nights. The effects could be compared (though very different experiences) to 500+ mcg of LSD. Slim is supervised by 1 to 2 experienced sitters in a close-knit group of 4 to 6 people maximum. NOTE: In the 4 weeks prior to these sessions, he does not consume any ibogaine or psilocybin.

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY I sat down next to Connie at the front desk. I almost never sat down next to Connie when she wasn’t just starting to rub lotion into her hands. I watched her rub her hands together. Her hands were like lubed animals doing a mating dance. And she was hardly alone: people everywhere kept bottles of lotion in and around their desks, people everywhere that morning were just starting to rub lotion into their hands. I missed the point. I hated missing the point, but I did, I missed it completely. If I could just become a lotioner, I thought, how many other small, pleasurable gestures made throughout the day might click into place for me, and all that exile, all that alienation and scorn, simply vanish? But I couldn’t do it. I despised the wet sensation that refused to subside even after all the lotion had been rubbed in and could be rubbed in no farther. I hit that terminal point and wanted nothing more to do with something either salutary or vain but never pleasant. I thought it was heinous. That little hardened dollop of lotion right at the lip of the squirter, that was really so heinous. But it was part of the point, the whole point. Why was I always on the outside looking in, always alien to the in? As I say, Connie was not alone. In medical offices, law firms, and advertising agencies, in industrial parks, shipping facilities, and state capitols, in ranger stations and even in military barracks, people were moisturizing. They

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. —2 Corinthians 5:6–7 (NIV) I was clicking though my usual Monday morning e-mail glut when I noticed in the reflection of the monitor that I’d missed a spot shaving. Now I was beating myself up about being so careless and felt like the Wolfman himself, transmogrifying from human to beast. I recalled that somewhere deep in the recesses of one of my drawers was a razor. A second later I was ransacking my desk in search of it. That’s when Carlos walked in, a gentleman who shows up once a week with his watering can to check on our office foliage. “What are you looking for?” he asked. “Nothing, really,” I muttered. “You are looking awfully hard for nothing,” he said. His watering can gurgled as he attended to one of my philodendrons. “I’m trying to find a razor. I missed a spot shaving this morning.” “Stubble is fashionable on men these days,” he said. “I look like the Wolfman.” “Maybe people will appreciate what a good job you did on the rest of your face.” I turned from my rummaging and shot Carlos a look. He was laughing, his face crinkled up with mirth. All of a sudden I was laughing too. “Don’t take yourself so seriously, Mr. Edward. It’s only Monday. You have the whole week ahead of you!” Then Carlos and his watering can were off to the next office. He was right: A whole week lay ahead—a good week, if I wanted it to be. Lord, it’s me again, Mr. Edward. Thank You for Carlos and beard stubble and gurgling watering cans and thirsty philodendrons and all the other stray blessings You bestow upon this too often insecure soul. —Edward Grinnan Digging Deeper: Ps 118:24; Mt 6:11

IN BERLIN, JOSEPH GOEBBELS contemplated the motivation behind Churchill’s broadcast, and its potential effect. He kept careful watch on the evolving relationship between America and Britain, weighing how his propagandists might best influence the outcome. “The battle over intervention or non-intervention continues to rage in the USA,” he wrote in his diary on Monday, April 28, the day after the broadcast. The outcome was hard to predict. “We are active to the best of our ability, but we can scarcely make ourselves heard against the deafening Jew-chorus. In London they are placing all their last hopes in the USA. If something does not happen soon, then London is faced with annihilation.” Goebbels sensed mounting anxiety. “Their great fear is of a knock-out blow during the next weeks and months. We shall do our best to justify these fears.” He instructed his operatives on how best to use Churchill’s own broadcast to discredit him. They were to mock him for saying that after he visited bombed areas, he came back to London “not merely reassured but even refreshed.” In particular, they were to seize on how Churchill had described the forces he had transferred from Egypt to Greece to confront the German invasion. Churchill had said: “It happened that the divisions available and best suited to this task were from New Zealand and Australia, and that only about half the troops who took part in this dangerous expedition came from the Mother Country.” Goebbels leapt on this with glee. “Indeed, it so happened! It invariably ‘so happens’ that the British are in the rear; it always so happens that they are in retreat. It so happened that the British had no share in the casualties. It so happened that the greatest sacrifices during the offensive in the West were made by the French, the Belgians and the Dutch. It so happened that the Norwegians had to provide cover for the British flooding back from Norway.

Variations on a tired, old theme Here’s another example of addict manipulation that plagues parents. The phone rings. It’s the addict. He says he has a job. You’re thrilled. But you’re also apprehensive. Because you know he hasn’t simply called to tell you good news. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Then comes the zinger you knew would be coming. The request. He says everybody at this company wears business suits and ties, none of which he has. He says if you can’t wire him $1800 right away, he won’t be able to take the job. The implications are clear. Suddenly, you’ve become the deciding factor as to whether or not the addict will be able to take the job. Have a future. Have a life. You’ve got that old, familiar sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. This is not the child you gladly would have financed in any way possible to get him started in life. This is the child who has been strung out on drugs for years and has shown absolutely no interest in such things as having a conventional job. He has also, if you remember correctly, come to you quite a few times with variations on this same tired, old story. One variation called for a car so he could get to work. (Why is it that addicts are always being offered jobs in the middle of nowhere that can’t be reached by public transportation?) Another variation called for the money to purchase a round-trip airline ticket to interview for a job three thousand miles away. Being presented with what amounts to a no-choice request, the question is: Are you going to contribute in what you know is probably another scam, or are you going to say sorry and hang up? To step out of the role of banker/victim/rescuer, you have to quit the job of banker/victim/rescuer. You have to change the coda. You have to forget all the stipulations there are to being a parent. You have to harden your heart and tell yourself parenthood no longer applies to you—not while your child is addicted. Not an easy thing to do. P.S. You know in your heart there is no job starting on Monday. But even if there is, it’s hardly your responsibility if the addict goes well dressed, badly dressed, or undressed. Facing the unfaceable: The situation may never change In summary, you had a child and that child became an addict. Your love for the child didn’t vanish. But you’ve had to wean yourself away from the person your child has become through his or her drugs and/ or alcohol abuse. Your journey with the addicted child has led you through various stages of pain, grief, and despair and into new phases of strength, acceptance, and healing. There’s a good chance that you might not be as healthy-minded as you are today had it not been for the tribulations with the addict. But you’ll never know. The one thing you do know is that you wouldn’t volunteer to go through it again, even with all the awareness you’ve gained. You would never have sacrificed your child just so that you could become a better, stronger person. But this is the way it has turned out. You’re doing okay with it, almost twenty-four hours a day. It’s just the odd few minutes that are hard to get through, like the ones in the middle of the night when you awaken to find that the grief hasn’t really gone away—it’s just under smart, new management. Or when you’re walking along a street or in a mall and you see someone who reminds you of your addicted child, but isn’t a substance abuser, and you feel that void in your heart. You ache for what might have been with your child, the happy life, the fulfilled career. And you ache for the events that never took place—the high school graduation, the engagement party, the wedding, the grandkids. These are the celebrations of life that you’ll probably never get to enjoy. Although you never know. DON’T LET    YOUR KIDS  KILL  YOU  A Guide for Parents of Drug and Alcohol Addicted Children PART 2

against the velvet rope force fields that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph requests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal staircase leading up into the club. Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.” As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club. In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in. As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in

The fact that no one made demands on her knowledge in her special field was lucky for Simochka. Not only she but many of her girlfriends had graduated from the institute without any such knowledge. There were many reasons for this. The young girls had come from high schools with very little grounding in mathematics and physics. They had learned in the upper grades that at faculty council meetings the school director had scolded the teachers for giving out failing marks, and that even if a pupil didn't study at all he received a diploma. In the institute, when they found time to sit down to study, they made their way through the mathematics and radio-technology as through a dense pine forest. But more often there was no time at all. Every fall for a month or more the students were taken to collective farms to harvest potatoes. For this reason, they had to attend lectures for eight and ten hours a day all the rest of the year, leaving no time to study their course work. On Monday evenings there was political indoctrination. Once a week a meeting of some kind was obligatory. Then one had to do socially useful work, too: issue bulletins, organize concerts, and it was also necessary to help at home, to shop, to wash, to dress. And what about the movies? And the theater? And the club? If a girl didn't have some fun and dance a bit during her student years, when would she do so afterward? For their examinations Simochka and her girlfriends wrote many cribs, which they hid in those sections of female clothing denied to males, and at the exams they pulled out the one the needed, smoothed it out, and turned it in as a work sheet. The examiners, of course, could have easily discovered the women students' ignorance, but they themselves were overburdened with committee meetings, assemblies, a variety of plans and reports to the dean's office and to the rector. It was hard on them to have to give an examination a second time. Besides, when their students failed, the examiners were reprimanded as if the failures were spoiled goods in a production process—according to the well-known theory that there are no bad pupils, only bad teachers. Therefore the examiners did not try to trip the students up but, in fact, attempted to get them through the examination with as good results as possible.

If we follow Jesus, our status before God is righteous. The gavel has come down and our righteousness is secure in the work of Jesus Christ. God’s verdict is not subject to change based on our performance. We didn’t become righteous because of our performance, and we can’t lose our righteousness because of our performance. We don’t have to worry about getting escorted off God’s premises. We have access, we have resources, and we have blessings because of Jesus. It is easy to hear this sort of message and get excited about it. We hear a preacher talking about God’s forgiveness and grace on Sunday, and we’re like, “Woohoo! I’m in! This is great!” But then Monday comes around, and it’s really hard to apply this reality when we’re having one of those moments when we lose our minds, or make dumb decisions, or go off on somebody, or do that stupid, ridiculous thing we swore we’d never do again. Suddenly, here comes the negative emotion. Here come the bad feelings. Here comes that sense that our status cannot possibly be the same as it was in church yesterday. That’s what the Bible calls condemnation. It’s a very real phenomenon. If you are a follower of Jesus, a Christian, and have never experienced condemnation, you might be God. For the rest of us mortals, we’ve all experienced it. Guilt. Shame. A sense that our status has changed. I’m going to take this a step further. This might sound weird at first, but I think we actually, in a very sadistic way, enjoy condemnation. Why? Because condemnation is logical; and in a weird, twisted, dark sense, it gratifies our flesh. It actually feels right to feel horrible, to feel depressed, to feel dejected, to feel despair. “I messed up. I did something so stupid. This serves me right.” But in fact, condemnation doesn’t serve us at all. In the verses above, the Bible says that condemnation should have no part in our existence on this planet if we belong to Jesus. As humans, we are experts at confusing our feelings with reality. We take our negative emotions and thoughts at face value, and we think, I feel bad, so I must be bad. I feel guilty, so I must be guilty. And if I’m disappointed and mad at myself, God must be way more disappointed and mad at me. Since we feel condemned, we think we are condemned. And since we think we are condemned, we work harder to regain our lost status. Instead of going confidently to God and asking for his grace to get back up and move forward in life, we try to patch ourselves up and put ourselves back together so we can attain the status of righteous before God again. Ironically, since we will never measure up to perfection, the more we try to earn our righteousness, the worse we feel. It’s the cycle of condemnation. I find it’s far easier to believe we are sinners than to believe we are righteous. But we are already righteous through Jesus. It’s a gift, and it’s called grace. How much time do we waste as Jesus followers trying to recover what we have had all along?

Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so for when it’s time to go to sleep. If there is only one piece of advice you remember and take from these twelve tips, this should be it. Exercise is great, but not too late in the day. Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days but not later than two to three hours before your bedtime. Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as eight hours to wear off fully. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a nightcap or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax, but heavy use robs you of REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep. Heavy alcohol ingestion also may contribute to impairment in breathing at night. You also tend to wake up in the middle of the night when the effects of the alcohol have worn off. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. If you have trouble sleeping, talk to your health care provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you’re taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening. Don’t take naps after 3 p.m. Naps can help make up for lost sleep, but late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night. Relax before bed. Don’t overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual. Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you’re more ready to sleep. Dark bedroom, cool bedroom, gadget-free bedroom. Get rid of anything in your bedroom that might distract you from sleep, such as noises, bright lights, an uncomfortable bed, or warm temperatures. You sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Having a comfortable mattress and pillow can help promote a good night’s sleep. Individuals who have insomnia often watch the clock. Turn the clock’s face out of view so you don’t worry about the time while trying to fall asleep. Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime. Don’t lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get up and do some relaxing activity until you feel sleepy.

If the human race ever wishes to master time travel then the answer is through chemical and not mechanical means. Speed is time travel. It will pilfer away at the space-time around you without your consent, propelling you forward through time. The human body is a vehicle of flux. It is exhilarating to move rhythmically, pulsing, stepping through pockets of your existence in fluid motions. The time that speed steals from you, it gives back with interest, cold and hard on a Monday morning. It brings with it a terrifying despair that creeps upon you. It is a black, slow-motion suicide. The ceiling begins to drip and ooze grey-brown sludge. Aural hallucinations, the demons of psychosis, speak wordless words of pure dread... Sometimes I would laugh and giggle hysterically at inane nonsensical stories that would play out in my mind. I would watch them unfold, like a lucid dream, weird images, Boschian forms, twisted nightmares... And I would weep. I would weep for nothing with salty tears, rivers of anguish and existential pain running down my face, dripping quietly onto the carpet. Day after day, I would unravel myself, dissect, and analyse my life over and over until I was exhausted and insane. Speed is not an insightful drug. It will not delude you into a false sense of spirituality like hallucinogens. It is the aftermath and the come down from speed that will rip open your ego and show you the bare, horrible bones of yourself. It will open the beautiful black doorway inside you and it will show you nothing. Through the darkness of internal isolation, the amphetamine comedown will show you no god, no spirituality, no soul, just your own perishable flesh, and your own animal self-preservation. It will show you clearly just how ugly you really are inside. In the emptiness of yourself, there is only the knowledge of your eventual death. When you have truly faced yourself and recognised yourself as purely animal then you become liberated from the societal pretence that you are above or better than any other creature. You are a human animal. You are naturally motivated to be selfish. Everything you do, every act you partake of, is in its essence an act of survival. No act of the human-animal happens without the satisfaction of the ego’s position in existence…

So training smart, training effectively, involves cycling through the three zones in any given week or training block: 75 percent easy running, 5 to 10 percent running at target race paces, and 15 to 20 percent fast running or hill training in the third zone to spike the heart and breathing rates. In my 5-days-a-week running schedule, that cycle looks like this: On Monday, I cross-train. Tuesday, I do an easy run in zone one, then speed up to a target race pace for a mile or two of zone-two work. On Wednesday, it’s an easy zone-one run. Thursday is an intense third-zone workout with hills, speed intervals, or a combination of the two. Friday is a recovery day to give my body time to adapt. On Saturday, I do a relaxed run with perhaps another mile or two of zone-two race pace or zone-three speed. Sunday is a long, slow run. That constant cycling through the three zones—a hard day followed by an easy or rest day—gradually improves my performance in each zone and my overall fitness. But today is not about training. It’s about cranking up that treadmill yet again, pushing me to run ever faster in the third zone, so Vescovi can measure my max HR and my max VO2, the greatest amount of oxygen my heart and lungs can pump to muscles working at their peak. When I pass into this third zone, Vescovi and his team start cheering: “Great job!” “Awesome!” “Nice work.” They sound impressed. And when I am in the moment of running rather than watching myself later on film, I really think I am impressing them, that I am lighting up the computer screen with numbers they have rarely seen from a middle-aged marathoner, maybe even from an Olympian in her prime. It’s not impossible: A test of male endurance athletes in Sweden, all over the age of 80 and having 50 years of consistent training for cross-country skiing, found they had relative max VO2 values (“relative” because the person’s weight was included in the calculation) comparable to those of men half their age and 80 percent higher than their sedentary cohorts. And I am going for a high max VO2. I am hauling in air. I am running well over what should be my max HR of 170 (according to that oft-used mathematical formula, 220 − age) and way over the 162 calculated using the Gulati formula, which is considered to be more accurate for women (0.88 × age, the result of which is then subtracted from 206). Those mathematical formulas simply can’t account for individual variables and fitness levels. A more accurate way to measure max HR, other than the test I’m in the middle of, is to strap on a heart rate monitor and run four laps at a 400-meter track, starting out at a moderate pace and running faster on each lap, then running the last one full out. That should spike your heart into its maximum range. My high max HR is not surprising, since endurance runners usually develop both a higher maximum rate at peak effort and a lower rate at rest than unconditioned people. What is surprising is that as the treadmill

Fourth, I paid attention to every detail I could while working on my cases. I found that one of the most ironic facets of the law is that the correct answer to a problem often rests on small legal nuances and factual details. The presence or absence of a particular fact can frequently make or break the case. The senior attorney I worked for, Brad, was extremely adept at assimilating large amounts of information quickly, paying close attention to details, and using his mastery of them to weave brilliant defenses. His ability to identify the most critical of details while constructing solid defenses always impressed me, and I tried to emulate that particular skill. Fifth, I was conscientious about creating good first impressions. As I later learned, lawyers who work with new summer and permanent associates virtually always form quick conclusions about them, and give “hallway evaluations” to other lawyers in the firm. I often heard about or participated in these hallway evaluations, and know that even one negative impression can have a devastating impact. In general, young attorneys who get a reputation for sloppy work – earned or unearned – have a very steep climb up the law firm ladder. Sixth, I was vigilant about meeting deadlines, every time. This meant I had to carefully plan ahead, since partners, colleagues, clients, courts, and other parties often rely on assignments and legal services to be performed by a certain time. With the workload I had, and the interruptions I faced, of course this wasn’t always possible, and in those situations I found the best route wasn’t just to tough it out, but rather let the supervising attorney know as early as possible if I couldn’t meet a deadline. I learned this lesson the hard way. My first assignment as a summer associate was to research whether we could squeeze one of our clients into an exception to a well-settled legal doctrine. The senior attorney who gave me the assignment asked me to research the issue and then get back to him by Friday afternoon. I just didn’t feel comfortable with my research when Friday afternoon came around, and decided to buy some additional time by letting him contact me. He didn’t try to reach me Friday afternoon, so I took advantage of that and submitted the assignment on Monday. The incident later came back to haunt me, though, because in his evaluation of my work for my midsummer review, he mentioned that I didn’t report to him by the established deadline.

Most major media outlets covered the story, and people around the world began immediately to respond with prayers and good wishes on social media. When Jep heard what was going on, he jumped on Twitter and tweeted this on Saturday from his hospital bed: Well, I about died this past Sunday…I’m doing much better now. Thanks for all the prayers! #seizuresuck #gladtobealive As if that wasn’t enough, he also posted a side-by-side photo of himself and a bearded Steven Seagal, both unconscious in a hospital bed and wrapped in a white sheet. “Just like Steven Seagal, I’m hard to kill,” it said in a caption at the bottom. It’s always a good sign when you get your sense of humor back. Monday morning, most of Jep’s doctors said he could go home. One of his doctors wanted him to stay for a month, but Jep wanted out. I didn’t blame him. We walked out of the hospital together. Jep could walk, but he was very weak and wobbly. One the way home we stopped to check out the house we were remodeling, and then I got him home to rest. The next day he asked, “When are we going to go look at the house?” “We went yesterday,” I told him. He didn’t remember. I let the kids stay home from school that Monday, and we had a wonderful time just being together. There were lots of hugs and smiles, and Jep played cards with River. I noticed he was talking a little slower than normal, but he was talking. And I knew everything was going to be okay.

The waves lapped onto the shore in quiet, relentless ripples. A seagull screeched from somewhere down the shoreline, and another bird replied. She missed home, the comfort of her padded swing, her tall shade trees and scented lilac bushes. If she closed her eyes and blocked out the sound of the waves, she could almost imagine that she was back home in her garden, dozing on her swing under the tall oak— “Hey, Meri!” Jake’s voice shattered the illusion. She craned her head around, following the sound of his voice to an upstairs window. His elbows perched lazily on the ledge. She glared up at him. “Meridith.” “Wanna come take a look?” She’d rather beat the smug grin off his face. “Be right there.” Her bones ached as she climbed the main stairway, a repercussion of her night on the hard floor. Just beyond the guest loft, Jake stood in front of the doorway, making some final adjustment to the latch. It looked different with the area closed off from the hall. The smell of wood and some kind of chemical hung in the air. “What do you think?” He’d already hung the drywall, and the patching was drying, which explained the smell. He swung the door open, showing her the thumb-turn on the other side, then closed the door and demonstrated the lock with the key. Thank you, Vanna. “Are both doors keyed the same?” “Yep.” He threw her the new set of keys, and she caught it clumsily. She’d keep one set in her room and find a hiding spot in the kitchen for the other. He gathered his tools and supplies. Now that he was finished, maybe she could take the kids to the driving range. She could teach them how to tee off. Jake capped the drywall compound, then walked through the new doorway toward the family suite. “Where are you going?” Meridith followed him down the hall. “Patching up the other partition.” “I thought you were done.” “If I get them both patched, they’ll be ready to sand and paint on Monday. You got any more of this green?” “What? I don’t know.” He trotted down the back stairway and unlocked the new door’s thumb-turn. Meridith stopped at the top of the steps, sighing. The sooner he finished, the sooner he’d be out of her life. Out of the house, she corrected herself. That man was not in her life.

At least May and Will had grabbed the bus twenty minutes earlier and were probably already at school. They’d gone back the Monday after the funeral. “Luckily” Natalie had passed away over winter break, or at least that’s what at least half the out-of-state relatives kept saying. “How nice the kids don’t have to miss any school.” Luke had to work really hard to bite his tongue. As

worked hard at it, all these months, trying to get my knee back in shape—again. I’d dealt with my first catastrophic knee injury four years ago, a training accident that occurred right after I returned from my first Olympics empty-handed. “But that’s the point, Bly. I went through surgery

The Monday night after Halloween, I made myself go to the college Bible study Willie was teaching. There were about six or seven other guys, and we met in the gym. Brian, the guy I’d seen at the party, was there too. I wasn’t too worried. Since he was at the party, he probably wasn’t too proud of himself and wouldn’t be telling my brother about it. But Willie got up in front of us and said, “I know some of you guys are struggling, and struggling hard.” That got my attention. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, but I remember thinking, He’s never said anything like that before. A couple nights later, I got drunk and went to the movies. When I came out to the parking lot, I saw a note on the windshield of my truck. I picked it up and unfolded it. “I know what you’ve been up to. We need to talk.” It was from Willie.

Everyday is a Monday

Okay. She’s called Rachel Woods, and she’s been my childminder for five years. I’ve got another child, Katie, who’s seven. Rachel’s wonderful with her. Katie has boundless energy and is full of questions from the second she wakes up. She can be hard work, but Rachel knows how to deal with her.” She kissed the top of Tom’s head. “I don’t know what I’d do without Rachel. She looks after Tom all day while I’m at work, and then goes for Katie at school. She even helps Katie with her homework. I told her she didn’t have to, but she says she doesn’t mind.” Connie nodded. “And when did Rachel go missing?” “On Monday. I know that’s only two days ago, but Rachel has just disappeared. She hasn’t sent me any messages to say where she is. She’s never let me down before. I turned up at her house on Monday to find it empty and her car gone. I’ve phoned her many times, but there’s never any reply. I couldn’t find another childminder at short notice, so I’ve had to take time off work.” Her eyes welled up. “I’m so worried about her. Rachel’s not the kind of person to let anyone down.

Step Four: Ideal-Week Planning Now you need to take your “only I can do” list and actually plot out how you will get all these things done. I hope your to-do list is shorter than when you picked up this book. If so, that reduction is a massive win in itself. The goal is to schedule all these things out. Literally, go through the list, plot each item into your calendar, and create an automated repeating appointment so it shows up in your calendar on a weekly basis. For example, if only you can write a weekly blog post and you know you need about three hours to write and publish a post, create a three-hour appointment in your calendar from ten to one o’clock on Mondays, for example, and then make it a recurring appointment. The same process can be followed for child-related activities. If you are the person who primarily picks up your kids from school, put an appointment in your calendar for the amount of time it takes to drive or walk to the school, pick them up, and return home. Repeat this task for all the activities you have on the only-you list. Once you’ve entered these activities, you may be thinking, Okay, Lisa, that’s great, but I have now run out of time. So what happens if you actually block everything in and you run out of hours in the week? If I were sitting across from you in a private coaching session, this is what I would ask: •Are all the activities in your calendar truly things only you can do? Is there anything that could be delegated to someone else? •Can any of these activities be batched with something else? For example, could you do research for a blog post on your phone while you run on the treadmill? Can you do phone calls on your commute home or while grocery shopping for your family? •Is everything in your calendar actually aligned with your ideal life plan? Is there anything on the list that is no longer supporting this plan? Be honest with yourself about things that need to go—even if you are having a hard time letting go. •Can you reduce the amount of time it takes to do an activity? This might seem like an incredibly overwhelming exercise, but trust me, it is an incredibly worthwhile exercise. It might seem rigid to schedule everything in your life, but scheduling brings the freedom not to worry about how you are spending your time. You have thought it through, and you know that every worthwhile activity has been accounted for. This system, my friend, is the cure to mom guilt. When you know you have appropriately scheduled dedicated time for your children, your spouse, yourself, and your work, what do you have to feel guilty about?

At recess, Sara invited me to hang out with her and her friends: Megan, Nina and Destiny. I was so excited. It was hard for me not to act like a spaz. But I gave it my best shot. I tried to act as though it was no big deal, as though being their friend was something I expected to do today anyway—like it was on my list. Monday, I’ll swallow my contact, Tuesday I’ll throw up on Sara, Wednesday I’ll break my arm, Thursday I’ll stink at kick ball, and what should I do on Friday? Hmmm. I guess I’ll be friends with the coolest girls in my new class. Why not? I have nothing better to do.

Spent to many nights with depression So much energy into stressing Was hard to compress it So turned all my Ls into lessons And moved a few niggas around To receive all these blessings

No, they were," Avery said, clearly confusing her. As he waited for someone to answer the phone, he gave Janice his most cocky grin, a very clear watch-me-get-what-I-want expression. "La Bella Luna, can I help you?" The deep rich timbre turned him on instantly, and his gaze strayed to the corner of his desk, Janice completely forgotten. "Good Morning, this is Avery Adams. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?" He already knew the answer, he just wanted to hear Kane's voice again. Avery thought about Kane's hands and how competently he'd handled that bottle of wine. He imagined them using the same care as he picked up the phone from the cradle. The air in the room sizzled, his heartbeat picked up, and his body grew hard with need. He had never in his life been so immediately taken with another. Avery prayed Kane might be at least bi-sexual. Straight men were much harder to work into his bed—not impossible, but harder—and he definitely wanted Kane Dalton in his bed. "Hello, Mr. Adams. This Kane Dalton, would you prefer I transfer this call to someone else?" The soothing voice on the other end of the phone became tense. "No, you're who I was hoping to speak with. It seems you and I may have gotten off on the wrong foot, and I'd like to set things right between us," Avery said, adjusting his gaze to stare out the open window. "I have no issue with you, sir," Kane responded back immediately. "There's a large bouquet of rather expensive lilies sitting in my office that might say otherwise." He cut his eyes back to the flowers on the small conference table. Kane didn't respond this time, there was just silence. Good. Kane got a taste of his own medicine. "Listen, I'd like to book a regular table in your restaurant a couple of days a week. It doesn't have to be the same days each week, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself a few nights ago and got reacquainted with several families from my youth." He was met with more silence, then he heard the rustle of pages being turned. "Sir, I'm sorry, but I just don't have—" "I'll make it worth your while." Avery cut him off, his eyes still on the flowers, but seeing the man who sent them instead of the lovely blooms. "It's not that, sir. We're just incredibly booked." Kane started with the excuses again, but Avery wasn't taking no for an answer. "Please lose the sir. My name's Avery. I'd like you to use it." Avery's voice turned lower and huskier as he spoke from his deepest desires. "Avery," Kane said as if testing the word. "We don't have the space available. We're booked solidly for several months." "No one's that booked," Avery called him on the lie, and left it right there between them. After a long extended pause, Kane finally answered, "You're right, let's get you in Monday and Wednesday evenings. Does that suit you?" "You sure do," Avery said. Now that he'd managed a firm reservation, it was time to draw Kane in. Not surprisingly, he was met with silence. "I'll take whatever days you offer." In fact, I'll take whatever you are willing to give. As the thought faded, Avery realized those were actually terrible days to be seen out and about. "Seven o'clock?" Kane asked, ignoring everything he said. "Whatever works," Avery replied. "All right, would you like to come in tomorrow night?" Kane asked. His tone was back to all business. "Absolutely!

But now they must’ve worn off. He thought he may have groaned. It was hard to be sure in his kinda awake state. He tried to move his hand and yelled out at the pain. Oh yeah, fractured wrist. “Easy there, bad boy.” Oh my lord. Curtis would know that sexy whisky-dripped baritone anywhere. He’d force open his own eyes now just to see those green eyes looking down at him. He didn’t care if his head exploded into a million pieces. It’d be worth it for this sight. “Open those beautiful baby blues,” Genesis said in a hushed drawl. Curtis fought through the fog and the pain and cracked open his eyes. He blinked a few times at the harsh light above his head but he kept on until Genesis’ gorgeous face was in focus. Curtis’ lips parted in a smile. What on earth was he doing there? He believed it was a Monday now. Genesis should be in school. “Gen.

When you wake up on Monday morning, don’t accept those negative thoughts that come knocking on your door, saying, It will be a hard day and a long week. Traffic will be bad. I have so much work to do. I just need to make it through the Monday morning blues. Don’t buy into those thoughts. Instead, say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve already answered the door and almighty God, the Creator of the universe, has sent me a hand delivery of joy. I know this will be a great day!” Decide that for you, there are no Monday morning blues. Instead, choose the Monday morning dos by saying, “I do have a smile. I do have joy. I do have God’s favor. I do have victory.” Yes, I know some days are more difficult than others. But if you program your mind in a positive way, you won’t have to drag through certain days just hoping to get to Friday so you can finally enjoy life. Faith is always in the present. Your attitude should be: I’m excited to be alive at this moment. I’m excited to be breathing today. I’m excited about my family, my health, and my opportunities. I have plenty of reasons to be happy right now.

Why are we down here?” “To stock up on weapons.” Uncle Mort crossed to the far wall. “We need lots of ’em. Driggs, pick that up, it’s not going to kill you—” Driggs gave him a look. “Okay, it won’t further kill you. Take a couple of these, too.” He handed Lex and Driggs a few thin vials of Amnesia each. “What are these for?” “Weapons. Aren’t you paying attention?” He walked to yet another wall and began to load up on items that were, at long last, recognizable as instruments of death. “Guns?” she asked, surprised for some reason. “Not, like, Amnesia blow darts?” “Oh, which reminds me.” He took something else off the shelf. “What’s that?” “Amnesia blow darts.” Lex shook her head. “But why guns, if we have all of this other cool stuff?” “Because despite our best efforts to use Amnesia as much as we can instead of lethal force, we’ll probably need to kill some people, and guns kill people.” He moved on to the next wall and began rifling through more gadgets. “Or people kill people. I forget how the hippies say it. Now, this one’s for you, Lex. I’m going to need you to guard this with every meager iota of attention span you have left. Okay? I’m trusting you with this. Don’t lose it.” Lex got all her hopes up—even though she’d gotten to know Uncle Mort pretty well by now and should have known better than to get even a small percentage of her hopes up. And sure enough, the item he gave her caused the smile to evaporate right off her face. “Don’t lose it,” he repeated. Her eye twitched. “What is it?” “What does it look like?” “An oversize hole punch.” “Exactly.” “What?” she boomed as he went back to his papers. “You get guns, and Driggs gets the deadly Heisman, and all I get is an office supply?” “Yes. Don’t lose it.” It took every ounce of Lex’s strength to not kick the bubonic football into his face. Noticing this, Driggs swooped in and wrapped her in a calming, solid embrace. “Relax, spaz,” he said. “But he—” “—wouldn’t give you a bazooka. Oh, the unbearable trials and tribulations of the living.” Lex deflated. Nothing put things in perspective like remembering that your boyfriend had been killed not a few hours earlier and was now stuck in some hellish existence halfway between life and death. “Sorry,” she said, giving his arms a squeeze, happy that she could even do that. “That’s okay. Human problems are hard. Hangnails and tricky toothpaste tubes and getting shat on by birds and the like.” “Mondays suck too,” she mumbled into his chest. “Oh, Mondays are the worst

Only twenty-seven people in Britain can explain why the day after Christmas Day is called Boxing Day, but that doesn't stop millions from marking it by staying home from work. An intriguing side effect of thus having two consecutive public holidays is that no matter what days of the week they fall on, the British can easily justify taking the whole week off. Suppose Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday, with Boxing Day on the Wednesday. Well, then, what is the point, the contemporary Bob Cratchit cries, of bother to open up the office or factory on Monday, when we all plan to knock off work by lunchtime because it's Christmas Eve? And it's hardly worth cranking up the heat for a working week that's now been whittled down to just two days. By the time we finish complaining about our ingrate in-laws and the cheesy Christmas television programs and the blatant materialism of our kids, it's time to go home for the weekend. Isn't it simpler for Mr. Scrooge to close the countinghouse until the New Year? (He can still pay us, of course.) This creative logic is a little more challenging when Christmas Day is a Thursday, but several Plumley residents had pulled it off...

Principal Fazil was chiefly concerned with maintaining discipline, which required a proper harmony and order between, on the one hand, ther children of respectable families, who in class always sat in the front rows, and, on the other hand, the throngs of poorer boys. He had developed his own brand of thinking on this subject and shared it every Monday during the flag-raising ceremony, distilled as a slogan: "A good education removes the barriers between rich and poor!" Mevlut wasn't quite sure whether Principal Fazil meant to say to his poorer students, "If you study hard and finish school, you, too, will be rich," or whether he meant, "If you study hard and finish school, no one will notice how poor you are.

James Lee asked Bobby if he had ever referred to Reggie Brown as an employer at Picaboo. Bobby said he hadn’t. Lee showed him an automated email from Facebook, reading “Bobby Murphy tagged you in Picaboo under Employers.” Bobby’s eyes darted, his head tilted down, and he twitched his mouth nervously. Glancing up at Lee, he sheepishly replied “Uh … Well it looks like here that I did something to that effect,” Murphy said. “I don’t have a specific recollection of this happening … although I would say that it would have been unclear to me what … tagging someone as an ‘employer’ under Facebook would mean.” The following Monday, it was Evan’s turn in front of the deposition camera. Like Bobby, Evan got tripped up a few times. After getting Evan on the record that Reggie had not been building an application with Evan and Bobby, Lee showed Evan an email he sent to Nicole James, the blogger who wrote about Snapchat, in which he wrote, “I just built an app with two friends of mine (certified bros.)” Evan reluctantly admitted that the two people he was referring to were Bobby and Reggie. The deposition continued: “Did you come up with the idea for deleting picture messages?” “No.” “Did Bobby come up with the idea?” “No, he did not.” “Who came up with the idea?” “Reggie did.” “Do you think Reggie deserves anything for the contributions he made on the project?” Evan paused for seven seconds. The room was dead silent. “Reggie may deserve something for some of his contributions.” “Do you have any regrets?” Evan sat still for thirty seconds. Again, the room was noiseless. Evan searched for the right words. “That’s a really hard question for me because it’s pretty clear that I lost a good friend.

You see, if only people didn’t refuse quick and hard to think about next Monday, Virtue wouldn’t have such a hard and thankless time of it.

Monday’s child is fair of face Tuesday’s child is full of grace Wednesday’s child is full of woe Thursday’s child has far to go Friday’s child is loving and giving Saturday’s child works hard for his living … And the child that is born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Monday, November 29 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. —Psalm 119:105 (ESV) Here you go!” my twenty-two-year-old son, John, said cheerfully, handing me a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Since he began working he has also begun paying me rent. He prefers to pay in cash, I think because it is concrete evidence he is contributing to the family. We both enjoy the monthly ritual. This has been a long, long time coming. There were the years in which John’s anxiety triggered rages, then the years when he was depressed and didn’t leave the house except to walk the dog or go to therapy. There were long stretches of time when there seemed to be no path forward. Through those I learned that my inability to see how life could improve meant only one thing: that I couldn’t see the way through. Oddly, in retrospect, I can’t see the path we took, either. I think that’s because John’s progress was so incremental, each step forward so infinitely small as to be almost unnoticeable. It may also have something to do with the fact that the “lamp to my feet” that lit my path was much like the handheld oil lamps of biblical times, casting only enough light to illuminate my next stumbling step. Yet now my son is gainfully employed, a taxpaying citizen. He does not earn a lot, but he works hard and his boss likes him. Someday, I think, he will probably be able to afford his own apartment. I’m not worried about when that happens. There are those who might argue John “should” be doing X or Y or Z. For me, those “shoulds” don’t matter: I’ve learned we can’t move forward from where we wish we were. We can only move forward from where we are now. Lord, let Your word illuminate my next step. And then the one after. And the one after that. —Julia Attaway Digging Deeper: Psalm 44:18

After all, anticipation and regret let us narrow down our set of choices and make better decisions. Envy can be an internal compass that reveals what we value. Gratitude and a sense of purpose give us the willpower to come into the office on dreary Monday mornings.

I think it's really important to remember in today's world of viral posts, images, and sound bites that we all bring our own perceptions to the table. And that inevitably these are skewed by our past experiences or even an unconscious desire to see what we want to see. More than ever, quick judgements based on those snippets too often can have devastating consequences to other - and you'll learn this the hard way. - conversation with the author

I can make a General in five minutes, but a good horse is hard to replace.

It's easy to serve when everything is going well, but the hard times in life will lend credibility to your service and depth to your words.

you observe a typical Monday–Friday work or school schedule, then Friday, and particularly Friday afternoon, has four main upsides over some other leading planning-time contenders (Monday mornings or Sunday nights, judging by my surveys). There’s little opportunity cost. It is hard to start anything new on Friday afternoons. Many of us are sliding toward the weekend at that point. If this time would otherwise be wasted counting the hours until it is acceptable to sign off, why not repurpose it for planning? You can make Monday productive. If you plan on Fridays, you can make full use of your Monday mornings. Many of us have more energy at the start of things than we do later on. Planning on Fridays allows you to use that Monday-morning energy

Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won’t fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning. Set an alarm for bedtime. Often we set an alarm for when it’s time to wake up but fail to do so for when it’s time to go to sleep. If there is only one piece of advice you remember and take from these twelve tips, this should be it.

Dear Jesus, I have finally found the courage to admit I've craved food more than You. I have wept over giving up food while hardly giving a thought to You giving Your life for my freedom. I've been bound up by feelings of helplessness. I've been angry that I have to deal with this weight issue and have been mad at You for allowing this to be on of my lots in life. I've made excuses. I've pointed fingers. I've relied on food for things it could never give me. I've lied to myself about the realities of why I gain weight. I've settled and excused and justified my issues. I've been enthralled by buttered bread while yawning through Your daily bread. For all that, I am so sorry. These are not just little issues. These for me are suns -- missing the mark of your best for my life. With my whole heart, mind, and soul, I repent. I turn from the dieting mindset I turn from what I must give up and weep no more. I remove my toe keeping open the door to my old habits, my old mindset, my old go--to scripts. I choose freedom. I choose victory. I choose courage. And above all else, I choose You. Amen.

God's divine power has given us everything we need to experience victory in our struggles. We are to reflect a divine nature -- a secure identity in christ -- which helps us escape the corruption of the world and avoid evil desires. It is through biblical promises that we find the courage to deny the unhealthy desires. getting healthy is not just about having faith, goodness and knowledge. We have to add to that foundation by choosing to be self controlled and choosing to persevere even when the journey gets really hard. These qualities keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our pursuit of healthy eating and, even more importantly, in our pursuit of growing closer to god.

A small number of residents in each city have stopped caring whether they age a few seconds faster than their neighbors. These adventuresome souls come down to the lower world for days at a time, lounge under the trees that grow in the valleys, swim leisurely in the lakes that lie at warmer altitudes, roll on level ground. They hardly look at their watches and cannot tell you if it is Monday or Thursday. When the others rush by them and scoff, they just smile.

She didn't return to school until the first Monday in March. By that time she'd thought, thought long and hard, much of the time in solitude in her room, and healed herself. Of course, she kept up with her school assignments; she was diligent, even obsessive about that.

Only two professions allow you to know it all – creative writing and journalism. On Monday your beat his religion. It changes to History and International Politics on Tuesday. On Wednesday you are redeployed to another beat – maybe crime. On Thursday, your beat might be Education and on Friday you might be writing about Science and the Ozone Layer. On Saturday, it is the Stock Exchange and Sunday, you might write about Culture, Language, and Heritage. That’s why writers and journalists hardly have a stable life. Our brains don’t really settle – they work like a clock. ~E.T.H…AINA

This was Scotland in 1950: coast to coast Jock Tamson's bairns stood or sat, lugs cocked to the wireless for news from home and abroad, from Borlanslogie, from Korea, or tuned in for The McFlannels on a Saturday night, or It's All Yours on a Monday with young Jimmy Logan doing the daft laddie Sammy Dreep, sluttering 'Sausages is the boys!' This was Scotland in 1950: land of 250 pits and 80,000 colliers, 100,000 farmworkers and four universities: land of Singer sewing machines in Clydebank, the Saxone Shoe Company in Kilmarnock, Cox Brothers jute mills in Dundee and the North British Locomotive Company in Springburn, every town and city and every part of every city with it own industries and hard-won skills... This was the land of Leyland Tiger buses from Thurso to Dalbeattie, and double-deckers crowding the city trams towards oblivion, or grandiose department stores and miserable slums, tearooms and single-ends, savage sectarianism and gloomy gentility, no-quarter football and stultifying Sundays.

Because it is so hard to keep the world going. There is always the temptation to abandon the effort altogether. For there is always the sowing and the harvesting, the building and the repairing, the falling down and the rising up again. Every day, everything has to be done all over again. In our world, it is always Monday morning.

The seventies were crazy everywhere, but crazier in Los Angeles. It was the era of freewheeling drugs and sex, the rag end of the sixties. I refer to sprees, to strange couplings and triplings, to nights that started with beer and wine and ended with cocaine and capsules, to debaucheries too various to chronicle. In a sense, we were all Robert Mitchum, smoking rope in bed with two girls while the sun was still noon high. We thought it was normal. You would walk into a house for a pool party, and there, on the cocktail table in the center of the living room, as if it were nuts or cooked shrimp, would be a platter of cocaine. We did it because we were stupid, because we did not know the danger. When I talk about my drug years, I am talking about twenty-four months in the middle of the seventies. I was in the rock and roll world, which meant I was around the stuff all the time. Of course, it was more than mere proximity. I was fun when I was high, talkative and all-encompassing. I could go forever, never be done talking. To some extent, I was really self-medicating, using the drugs to skate over issues in my own life. The fact is, money and success had come so fast, while I was away doing something else, not paying attention, that, when I finally realized where I was and just what I had, I could not understand it. There was this voice in my head, saying, Who do you think you are? What do you think you did? You are a fraud! You don’t deserve any of this! I tortured myself, and let the anxiety well up, then beat back the anxiety with the drugs, on and on, until one day, I stood up and said, “Screw it. That’s over. I’m done.” No rehab, no counseling, nothing like that. Just a moment of clarity, in which I saw myself from the outside, the mess I was making, the waste. I was slipping, not working as hard as I used to. I started leaving the office early on Fridays, then skipping Fridays altogether. Then I started leaving early on Thursdays, then arriving late on Mondays. I was letting myself go. Then one day, I just decided, It has to stop. I threw away the pills and bottles, took a cold shower, had a barbershop shave, and stepped into the cool of Sunset Boulevard, and began fresh. Maybe it had to do with my family situation. I was a father again.

Since the briefing would have to begin at about 3am in order to make the 5am strike time, and the Met Police day is deemed to begin at 6am, they would technically be starting on Sunday and so all be on expensive overtime if we went for it on a Monday. Hence, Tuesday, 23 became the day when three months of hard work would become real and our quarry would be detained.

Love shouldn’t be this hard. It should feel effortless, you know? Easy like Sunday morning, not hard as fuck like a miserable ass Monday.

Chuck understood that most voters don’t really know what legislators do all day, but if the first thought that pops into their minds is “hard worker,” that’d be enough for most of them. And since winning that moniker also meant Chuck could satisfy his favorite pastime—getting attention—it meant almost the entire Schumer operation revolved around getting press all day, every day. The centerpiece of Chuck’s week was the Sunday press conference. It had all the markings of what made Chuck successful—he was willing to work every Sunday when his peers were not, Sunday night’s local newscasts were the highest rated of the week, and Monday’s papers were usually starved for news, so whatever nonsense you made up on Sunday had a decent chance of getting a story on Monday.

squatted at the corner of the hutch one more time. They’d been trying for an hour to get it loaded, but no matter how many different angles they attempted, it was too heavy for him and Violet to move on their own, especially with Violet’s arm still in a cast. “Let me give it a try.” Barney stepped forward, and Nate scrutinized him. He didn’t appear frail by any stretch, but the man was nearly ninety years old. Nate didn’t want to be responsible for breaking him. “Barnabas Riley, step away from that hutch right this minute.” Gladys bustled into the room, pointing a spatula at her husband. Barney stepped back. “Busted.” But he nudged Nate and whispered, “I wasn’t really going to do it. Just had to show her I’m still willing.” Nate laughed with him, but Violet gave the hutch a regretful pat. “Looks like it wasn’t meant to be.” “Hold on a minute, dear. You’re the one we want to have this.” Gladys disappeared again. Nate and Violet both looked at Barney, but he threw his hands into the air. “Even after sixty-five years of marriage, I don’t understand everything about that woman.” He winked at them again. “Keeps me on my toes.” Three minutes later, Gladys reappeared. “I called Sylvia, and she said her grandson can come over to help us.” “That’s great.” Violet pulled out a chair to sit down and stifled a yawn. She looked exhausted. “In the morning,” Gladys finished. Violet dropped the hand that had been covering her yawn. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we can come back tomorrow.” “Of course not.” Gladys waved her objection away. “You can stay with us. It’s getting late anyway. You don’t want to drive back yet tonight.” Nate stole a subtle peek at the time. It was already eight o’clock. And Violet looked ready to drop. She gave him a questioning look, and he shrugged, hoping she would understand that meant it was up to her. “I guess that would work. The store is always closed on Mondays anyway.” Her eyes traveled to Nate. “Unless you need to be in the office.” He should be. He really should be. If Dad called and he didn’t answer, he would never hear the end of it. But right now, he cared more about what Violet needed. And she needed this hutch to save her store. “I don’t need to be in the office.” “Oh, but Tony―” Violet clasped his arm. She had a point there. He couldn’t leave his dog uncared for. “Unless.” Violet pulled out her phone. “Just a second.” She wandered toward the kitchen with the phone pressed to her ear. “Looks like I’m not the only one with a mysterious woman.” Barney chuckled so hard he broke into a coughing fit. “Oh, we’re―” “Neighbors.” Gladys rested a hand on her husband’s back. “We know.” Barney stopped coughing and straightened, shooting Nate a wink. Nate was about to argue more, but Violet stepped back into the room. Her smile was enough to steal his protest. “Sophie’s going to stop by to take care of Tony tonight and tomorrow morning. I hope you don’t mind, but I told her about your super-secret hiding spot for the spare key.” Nate pretended to be shocked. “How do you know about that?” “I saw you putting it under the mat the other day when you forgot your keys, remember?” He did remember. He had been especially enchanted by her laugh that day. It was amazing how many of his recent memories involved her. Including

Train 2-7 times a week. Try to complete your workout in 45 min or less. Vary the length of your workouts, for example Monday 30 min, Tuesday 45 min, Wednesday 20 min, Thursday off, Friday 35 min.

Each session do as few or as many exercises as you wish but do not work equally hard on every one of them. For example, on Monday do a lot of sets of the bent press, on Tuesday skip the bent press or take it easy and work hard on snatches, etc. Do not be overly pedantic about the order. Just do not do one pet feat at the expense of everything else all the time. Also, do not be afraid to make some workouts relatively easier than others.

troubled, Alfred Allsworth (Fred) Thorp, Sheriff of Okanogan County approached the Lute Morris Saloon in Conconully Monday morning, November 9, 1909. Inside, a hard-looking stranger of medium height, with black hair and a mustache, who gave his name as Frank LeRoy, was playing cards at a table. Sheriff Thorp intended to question LeRoy regarding a safe blown in the A.C. Gillespie & Son store in Brewster a few days earlier and two residential burglaries in Brewster. A mild mannered Iowa farmer, Thorp came to the Okanogan in 1900, carried mail between Chesaw and Loomis, ran for sheriff. Armed with a six-shooter, Thorp feared only that some day, he might have to kill someone, which would compel him to resign, and this might be the day. LeRoy sat very still, watching the frontier sheriff approach the card table. “I’ll have to take you in, partner.” said Thorp. There must have been an unearthly silence in the saloon as LeRoy rose. Thorp drew his revolver, “I’m going to search you.” LeRoy turned as if to throw off his coat, and then jerked a pistol from a shoulder holster. The two opened fire simultaneously LeRoy dancing about to present an elusive target. LeRoy got off four shots. Thorp emptied his revolver, striking LeRoy’s right hand, causing him to drop his gun, and hitting the suspect in the shoulder as he bolted out a rear door. LeRoy staggered a few yards up Salmon Creek before hiding in some brush. “Look out, he’s got another gun” someone yelled from across the creek. Having borrowed a second revolver, the sheriff pounced, kicking LeRoy’s gun from his hand. LeRoy was rolled onto a piece of barn board and carried into the Elliot Hotel. There his wounds, including a punctured lung were treated. In LeRoy’s hotel room Thorp found two more guns, wedges and drills, and a supply of nitroglycerine. Two days later, LeRoy broke out of the county jail. Wearing only his nightshirt, a blanket for trousers, shoes and an old mackinaw taken from an elderly trusty who served as jailer, the desperado flew through chilling weather to Okanogan. Three days later, Thorp caught up with him in a fleld of sagebrush below Malott. LeRoy came out with his hands up commenting mildly he wished he had a gun so the two could shoot it out again. In January, 1910, at Conconully LeRoy was convicted of burglarizing the William Plemmon’s home at Brewster. Since this was his third burglary conviction, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla as a habitual criminal. After serving nine years, LeRoy, in ill health, was released in 1919. He once met Fred Thorp on a street in Spokane. They chatted for a few minutes. While there were, in pioneer times, numerous other confrontations between armed men, the Thorp-LeRoy gun flght probably was the closest Okanogan County ever came to a HIGH NOON shootout.

TIME SEEMED TO LOOP AND LEAP, MAKING IT FEEL impossible to measure or track. Each day was packed. Each week and month and year we spent in the White House was packed. I’d get to Friday and need to work to remember how Monday and Tuesday had gone. I’d sit down to dinner sometimes and wonder where and how lunch had happened. Even now, I still find it hard to process. The velocity was too great, the time for reflection too limited.

Against you, Doctor! How could I have it in for you when you’re so nice to me? Against poor Leonard, who does everything he can so that I don’t get worked up, so that I get along here as well as possible? Against anyone else? Well, that’s another story! I have to say that I can’t stand that quack Bid’homme. Of course, I feel sorry for him—as he deserves—but I am tired of seeing this ridiculous fool, who should be put in a straightjacket, intimidate, act like a tyrant, rant and rave, yell and insult everyone. He should be washed with Niagara jets until he bursts, which would not be a great loss to humanity! That Bid’homme! Argh! Him, yes, I hate! He’s a constant danger to the patients, whom he knows nothing about, and whom he might kill with his stupid brutality! Why don’t you lock up this dangerous lunatic, Doctor—or, at least, send him back to Franche-Comté, to his family, if they agree to be responsible for such an evil creature and keep him tied up 24 hours a day?” What was I saying? Doctor Froin looked different; he shrugged his shoulders sadly. I saw him—his mind was made up now: I was a monomaniacal madman with delusions of persecution. All my ideas, all my preoccupations and all my anger, was focused on Bid’homme. I was acting exactly like someone who was crazy. I would keep saying that he hounded his patients and hated them all—me, first and foremost! His doubts about his assistant might even have been erased by my angry outburst. He could blame it all on my madness. I tried desperately to redeem myself, to save myself. What should I do? What should I say? Wouldn’t I be cleverer to tell him everything I was thinking—however uncomfortable it might be? I cried out—as unloudly as possible: “Doctor! No! Don’t write me off like that with a flick of your hand. I know what you’re thinking; you think I’m obsessed! Don’t deny it: I’m sure of it! But it’s nothing like that! To show you I’m not the least bit deranged, let me say that I was a little hard just now—even though I hate your colleague Bid’homme, and think he’s dangerous and harmful to your patients, I have absolutely no problem thinking about other things. Why, today, I thought about a thousand things that had nothing to do with him. Do you want me to tell you about waking up this morning in this room? About what went on inside my head—pointing out the difference between the sane ideas and those that are still a little…off? Do you want to be sure that I am not sneaky or vindictive, like most of the mental patients? Well! You just told me that my relatives are coming on Monday, but you didn’t say whom, probably because you were concerned about making me angry. I’m going to tell you: it’s Roffieux—the one who brought me here. I swear to you that I have no hard feelings against him. I can honestly say that he is close to my heart, but if I leave Vassetot, no harm will come to him from me, I guarantee it. I will do what any good man would do in the same situation: I will go as far away as possible. True enough, he disgusts me and I don’t want him to have any more control over me, but it would never enter my mind to play a dirty trick on him!

But no matter how hard he tries, no matter how many Mondays arrive and he swears things will be different, he mostly phones it in.

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IF THEY CAN’T be their Monday-through-Saturday-self when they are with you in group, they will have a hard time applying their faith in everyday situations. IF THEY CAN’T share their doubts in community, they will dwell on them privately. IF THEY CAN’T ask you their questions, they are going to ask someone else. IF THEY DON’T admit their struggles to someone, they will never experience the power of bringing things to light in a way that facilitates freedom and forgiveness.

For example, consider one of Intuit’s flagship products. Because TurboTax does most of its sales around tax season in the United States, it used to have an extremely conservative culture. Over the course of the year, the marketing and product teams would conceive one major initiative that would be rolled out just in time for tax season. Now they test over five hundred different changes in a two-and-a-half-month tax season. They’re running up to seventy different tests per week. The team can make a change live on its website on Thursday, run it over the weekend, read the results on Monday, and come to conclusions starting Tuesday; then they rebuild new tests on Thursday and launch the next set on Thursday night. As Scott put it, “Boy, the amount of learning they get is just immense now. And what it does is develop entrepreneurs, because when you have only one test, you don’t have entrepreneurs, you have politicians, because you have to sell. Out of a hundred good ideas, you’ve got to sell your idea. So you build up a society of politicians and salespeople. When you have five hundred tests you’re running, then everybody’s ideas can run. And then you create entrepreneurs who run and learn and can retest and relearn as opposed to a society of politicians. So we’re trying to drive that throughout our organization, using examples which have nothing to do with high tech, like the website example. Every business today has a website. You don’t have to be high tech to use fast-cycle testing.” This kind of change is hard. After all, the company has a significant number of existing customers who continue to demand exceptional service and investors who expect steady, growing returns. Scott says, It goes against the grain of what people have been taught in business and what leaders have been taught. The problem isn’t with the teams or the entrepreneurs. They love the chance to quickly get their baby out into the market. They love the chance to have the customer vote instead of the suits voting. The real issue is with the leaders and the middle managers. There are many business leaders who have been successful because of analysis. They think they’re analysts, and their job is to do great planning and analyzing and have a plan.

George Mumford, a Newton-based mindfulness teacher, one such moment took place in 1993, at the Omega Institute, a holistic learning center in Rhinebeck, New York. The center was hosting a retreat devoted to mindfulness meditation, the clear-your-head habit in which participants sit quietly and focus on their breathing. Leading the session: meditation megastar Jon Kabat-Zinn. Originally trained as a molecular biologist at MIT, Kabat-Zinn had gone on to revolutionize the meditation world in the 1970s by creating a more secularized version of the practice, one focused less on Buddhism and more on stress reduction and other health benefits. After dinner one night, Kabat-Zinn was giving a talk about his work, clicking through a slide show to give the audience something to look at. At one point he displayed a slide of Mumford. Mumford had been a star high school basketball player who’d subsequently hit hard times as a heroin addict, Kabat-Zinn explained. By the early 1980s, however, he’d embraced meditation and gotten sober. Now Mumford taught meditation to prison inmates and other unlikely students. Kabat-Zinn explained how they were able to relate to Mumford because of his tough upbringing, his openness about his addiction — and because, like many inmates, he’s African-American. Kabat-Zinn’s description of Mumford didn’t seem to affect most Omega visitors, but one participant immediately took notice: June Jackson, whose husband had just coached the Chicago Bulls to their third consecutive NBA championship. Phil Jackson had spent years studying Buddhism and Native American spirituality and was a devoted meditator. Yet his efforts to get Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and their teammates to embrace mindfulness was meeting with only limited success. “June took one look at George and said, ‘He could totally connect with Phil’s players,’ ’’ Kabat-Zinn recalls. So he provided an introduction. Soon Mumford was in Chicago, gathering some of the world’s most famous athletes in a darkened room and telling them to focus on their breathing. Mumford spent the next five years working with the Bulls, frequently sitting behind the bench, as they won three more championships. In 1999 Mumford followed Phil Jackson to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he helped turn Kobe Bryant into an outspoken adherent of meditation. Last year, as Jackson began rebuilding the moribund New York Knicks as president, Mumford signed on for a third tour of duty. He won’t speak about the specific work he’s doing in New York, but it surely involves helping a new team adjust to Jackson’s sensibilities, his controversial triangle offense, and the particular stress that comes with compiling the worst record in the NBA. Late one April afternoon just as the NBA playoffs are beginning, Mumford is sitting at a table in O’Hara’s, a Newton pub. Sober for more than 30 years, he sips Perrier. It’s Marathon Monday, and as police begin allowing traffic back onto Commonwealth Avenue, early finishers surround us, un-showered and drinking beer. No one recognizes Mumford, but that’s hardly unusual. While most NBA fans are aware that Jackson is serious about meditation — his nickname is the Zen Master — few outside his locker rooms can name the consultant he employs. And Mumford hasn’t done much to change that. He has no office and does no marketing, and his recently launched website, mindfulathlete.org, is mired deep in search-engine results. Mumford has worked with teams that have won six championships, but, one friend jokes, he remains the world’s most famous completely unknown meditation teacher. That may soon change. This month, Mumford published his first book, The Mindful Athlete, which is part memoir and part instruction guide, and he has agreed to give a series of talks and book signings

It’s just,” He exhaled loudly and sunk further into his chair, “I had to pull a lot of strings to move here with you, you have no idea how hard it was to do that. I get here, and you’re with someone and my hopes of being with you were completely thrown out the window. I mean, I obviously was wrong, but I’d always thought you knew how I felt about you and thought you felt the same. So you can imagine how pissed off I was when I found out how wrong I was.” “We were just friends though, I don’t know how many times you and I both said that.” “No, to you we were just friends. Yes, you were my best friend, but that wasn’t it for me. You don’t realize how much time I spent with your dad talking about you. He knew exactly how I felt, he knew why I wanted to follow you to California, he was the one who helped get my transfer pushed through.” “Sir did?” I deadpanned, “The same guy who wouldn’t let me wear women’s clothes?” “Yep.” “I thought you said he wouldn’t let you date Harper when you were in his unit, so why would he help you follow her here?” Brandon asked calmly. “Uh yeah he did, but he was also the one to suggest the transfer.” “What?” Who was this guy Carter was talking about, and what did he do with my dad? “I know, shocked me too. I’d already been thinking of a way to move out here when he called me into his office that Monday after you got your acceptance letter. He said something like, ‘You know, Harper’s leaving for California soon, she’ll be near Pendleton. If you were there, you wouldn’t be in my unit anymore.’ And then he gave me that look, you know the one where he expects you to know what he’s thinking? Then he said he’d start the paperwork if I was serious about being with you, and that was that.” “That just seems …” I trailed off not knowing what word to use. “So unlike Sir?” “Yeah.” “Shocked

he had been off liquor since Monday; one more day would have finished it, made him whole once more, with no need to drink till the next cycle came around. If he had been able to hold off through yesterday, today he would have been normal again; and he knew himself and his habits well enough to know that that would have lasted some days, held possibly even two or three weeks, for he was a periodic drinker, with intervals of sobriety between. At the same time, he knew himself well enough also to know that once started, he had to go through it to the end, there was no stopping now, he could not prevent the downward curve to the final state of danger, destruction, or collapse. Short of being locked up, nothing could help him now till it had played itself out, safely or otherwise. The old Demon of Ennui had given him the shove, the Old Enemy had tricked him into starting all over again before he had recovered from the previous drunk, before he was well out of it at all. They were dangerously close together, those two binges—dangerously overlapping. This new one was bound to leave him worse off than the other, because he was hardly strong enough, as it was, to begin again.

Learning to fly was next on our agenda, and I could hardly wait. - 42 - Basic flight training was conducted at NAS Saufley Field, located about ten miles north of NAS Pensacola and only five miles from our rental house. We started the third week in January. It was a crisp and clear Monday morning in the Florida Panhandle as I approached the entrance to the base for that first day of flight training. I picked up my khaki fore-and-aft cap (commonly called the “piss cutter”) from the seat next to me and placed it squarely on my head, with my lieutenant’s bars on the left and the Navy anchor insignia on the right. I steered the car with my knees as I ran my

Letting confusion get in the way of changing your diet and lifestyle will deter you from facing the reality of how hard it is to give up sugar. If you’ll forgive the expression, I am not going to sugar-coat it: sugary drinks, donuts, cake, cookies and candy are out. And there’s no “okay in moderation.” What does that mean: once a week, once on the weekend, only on holidays? It probably doesn't mean Friday after work until Monday morning!

Kimbanguism is an extremely peace-loving religion, yet brimming with military allusions. Those symbols were not originally part of the religion, but were copied in the 1930s from the Salvation Army, a Christian denomination that, unlike theirs, was not banned at that time. The faithful believed that the S on the Christian soldiers’ uniform stood not for “Salvation” but for “Simon,” and became enamored of the army’s military liturgy. Today, green is still the color of Kimbanguism, and the hours of prayer are brightened up several times a day by military brass bands. Those bands, by the way, are truly impressive. It is a quiet Monday evening when I find myself on the square. While the martial music rolls on and on, played first by the brass section, then by flutes, the faithful shuffle forward to be blessed by the spiritual leader. In groups of four or five, they kneel before the throne. The spiritual leader himself is standing. He wears a gray, short-sleeved suit and gray socks. He is not wearing shoes. In his hand he holds a plastic bottle filled with holy water from the “Jordan,” a local stream. The believers kneel and let themselves be anointed by the Holy Spirit. Children open their mouths to catch a spurt of holy water. A young deaf man asks for water to be splashed on his ears. And old woman who can hardly see has her eyes sprinkled. The crippled display their aching ankles. Fathers come by with pieces of clothing belonging to their sick children. Mothers show pictures of their family, so the leader can brush them with his fingers. The line goes on and on. Nkamba has an average population of two to three thousand, plus a great many pilgrims and believers on retreat. People come from Kinshasa and Brazzaville, as well as from Brussels or London. Thousands of people come pouring in, each evening anew. For an outsider this may seem like a bizarre ceremony, but in essence it is no different from the long procession of believers who have been filing past a cave at Lourdes in the French Pyrenees for more than a century. There too, people come from far and near to a spot where tradition says unique events took place, there too people long for healing and for miracles, there too people place all their hope in a bottle of spring water. This is about mass devotion and that usually says more about the despair of the masses than about the mercy of the divine. After the ceremony, during a simple meal, I talk to an extremely dignified woman who once fled Congo as a refugee and has been working for years as a psychiatric nurse in Sweden. She loves Sweden, but she also loves her faith. If at all possible, she comes to Nkamba each year on retreat, especially now that she is having problems with her adolescent son. She has brought him along. “I always return to Sweden feeling renewed,” she says.