My daughter, increasingly the social butterfly, had a birthday party this afternoon. Being the control freak that I am, I brought a book (Jeanette Winterson) and camped out in a hard plastic bowling alley chair for the two hours it was scheduled to last.

Between chapters, I people watched. I watched odd interactions between lovers, one needing attention while the other checked out all the women around him. I watched children playing and pretending not to hear the adults yelling at them. I sat and blended in, preferring not to interact with the other mothers (never been my thing as I'm never ANYTHING like any of them), enjoyed my book and wished the minutes would tick away faster.

They didn't, of course, but my daughter had a great time and that's really what matters to me. My workweek starts again tomorrow, but for some reason I'm energized for it to come. I'm not grumpy this evening, which is a shock. Sundays usually find me in a foul mood for a variety of reasons.

But instead I'm planning on going to bed early, rising early for yoga and enjoying a week without dread. How much worse could it get than performing emergency surgery on an elderly Great Pyrenees at 3 am? I don't want to find out but, as a little advice, don't disturb me before 2 pm if that happens again.