The morning shift is sometimes interesting. I get out of bed at about 6:30 almost every morning to write; it’s more or less become habit by now. I still don’t find it easy to get out of bed in the morning, but getting a few hundred words written is always a good start to the day, which is enough of an incentive for me to get out of bed while I’ve still got time to start the day in a positive way.

But then there are Mondays.

Most mornings I’ll get up, get my coffee ready, and mostly look forward to sitting down and bashing my words out. But on Mondays you can never escape that ‘fucking Monday’ feel at the back of your head. It’s like an extra layer of matted vacuum cleaner fluff that you have to rip your way through before you can get started. And even when you do get started, you realise you’re still head to toe in matted vacuum cleaner fluff.

So, yeah, Monday’s an ordeal. I can get up, do my writing, but on the other side of the morning shift, it’s still fucking Monday.

So, around mid-morning I get a call from the Elderbeast to tell me that the power’s gone out. He’s at home with the Kinderbeast and their great-Nan. According to the website, the power’s due back at 2pm, so I tell him to hang tight. At 2pm the power’s still not back, so Rach goes to pick them all up and take them back to the in-laws house. At 5pm the power’s still not back, so I leave work and join them. We indulge in very expensive, but very good, Chinese take-out. The power is now due back at 6pm, which will work out nicely–we can eat and then go home. But, instead, the website is updated with a new, oddly specific, restoration time of 8:06pm. All this time, the extent of the power outage on the map has been shrinking until it’s seemingly focused on the few blocks immediately surrounding our house. It’s hard not to think that they’re consciously picking on us.

As 8pm arrives the website is still giving us mixed messages. The power outage message disappears, then reappears, then disappears. Could it be a website glitch? Or are they struggling to fix the problem? In the end the kids decide to sleep over with their grandparents–which is an adventure for them–and we head home to feed the cats in the hope that we have power.

We get home and the power is indeed restored, but after all the mild drama we’re too knackered to do much more than have a cuppa and an early night.