My Special Day

I skipped work today. February is a hard, hard month. Winter has gone on for sooo long by February that I'm short-tempered and worn down, and in anticipation of this, I asked for today off about six weeks ago. Good thing, too, because by Saturday night (yeah, I had to work on Saturday), every time someone spoke to me in the library, I had to bite my tongue to resist saying any of the following:

• If you're so smart, why are you asking me for help?
• No, I don't think it's surprising that your girlfriend left you.
• Well, then, please start parenting your children while you're in the library, so I don't have to.
• If I have to tell you one more time to get off that cell phone, I will rip these shelves apart with my bare hands and smash both you and the phone with my improvised weaponry.
• It's true that no one except for me has vocally complained about the volume of your music, but you're wrong in your statement that you're not bothering anyone. You're bothering me very much.

But today I stayed hooome. I stayed home and made red pepper, kale, and white bean pasta. I baked cream cheese brownies. I snuck my recycling over to the neighboring complex, because they have recycling bins and we don't. We hate the planet. I read What I Saw and How I Lied, the YA National Book Award winner. (I'm not sure how I feel about it.) I watched it snow out the window and felt smug that I picked such a fantastic day to stay home.

Let's hope that this lazy day will fortify me for tomorrow's very long work day in which I will teach uninterested high schoolers how to search databases, enable teenage boys in their video game obsession, and develop a new computer class series. At least I'll have brownies to carry in my pocket, in case the going gets tough.