Monday isn’t my favourite day. It insists on occurring right after a weekend, and it invariably signifies the beginning of a quite a few days before another weekend. Let’s face it, as far as days go, Monday is basically lame and usually sucks.
But I’m not the only one mentioning morose and maudlin Monday. There’s that popular song by The Mamas and Papas called Monday Monday where they sing: Can’t trust that day. In Rainy Days and Mondays Karen Carpenter says Mondays always get me down, and of course the hit song by The Bangles is called Manic Monday, and kind of speaks for itself.
Thing is, last Monday was all of the above. In the space of a few hours on that mulish, meretricious, malefic Monday I managed to almost drown my neighbour and take an unscheduled, unwanted, unnecessary trip to Lethbridge, of all places. Not that there’s anything wrong with Lethbridge – it’s just that it’s an awfully long ways to go to see a movie.
Maybe I should explain. You see, out on our patio we have a little swing thingie with a little cloth roof on top which is nice to sit on (the swing, not the roof) when you feel like being a bit of a swinger (sorry). However, in a confluence of coincidental events, when it rains a lot like it did Sunday night, the cloth roof gathers the rain in large pools that hang down over the swing seat like some sort of alien pods of blob. And as it happens, the swing and its roof back right onto the neighbours’ yard.
So after every rain, which has been about 12 times a week lately, to avoid the roof finally bursting under the weight I have to push the blob upwards with a broom handle and “empty” the roof. Into the neighbour’s yard. With their permission of course, but still – wow, it’s surprising how much water those blobs contain.
You can see where this is going.
Yes, I didn’t see our tiny neighbour who I shall call “Anne” because that’s her name – I didn’t notice that she was crouching right on the other side of the fence painting a nice mural on a little shed that sits there.
WHOOSH! “Aaacckkkk!” SPLASH! “OMG!”
Let’s put it this way: it’s a good thing our neighbours are very nice people who have so far avoided suing us for various reasons, and so all was forgiven. I just hope Anne’s paints and brushes (and mural) dry out eventually. Not to mention Anne herself.
But later, I realized that the movie theatres were finally open and I did a little happy dance and after checking that the Better Half was readily in favour of getting rid of me for a few hours, I jumped online to get a ticket. I didn’t have long before the show started and it’s been a while, so after 43 fretful attempts at getting my cinema tickets password correct, up came “Galaxy Cinemas” and I clicked here and there 18 times and I purchased my surprisingly expensive ducat, and at long last my ticket came grinding out of my printer. Just enough time to get the compulsory popcorn and get to my seat.
“I’m finally going to a movie again!” I shouted to the B.H. who didn’t need to be told that bit of information, and I did another happy dance, and she just shook her head, like she does.
So, I’m heading merrily out the door, and I gaze longingly at my ticket and that’s when I notice something. There, in small print at the top: Galaxy Cinema, Lethbridge, Alberta.
And if I hadn’t been so late, I was actually considering driving there.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer author and filmmaker. Send him a column idea at harleyhay1@hotmail.com.