There are some things you just don’t expect to see when you start your day. For me, it was the cow’s butt.

It’s Monday morning as I write this, and my first cup of coffee has just started its way into my system. The hardest part of my job, by far, is having to fool people into thinking I’m mildly intelligent and remotely interesting before the sun even comes up. When that mic turns on in the Gator 99.5 studio, I have to be ready for anything, whether the caffeine has hit my veins or not.

Some days it works, and other days, it doesn’t. Some days the caffeine doesn’t get there in time.

Today, for some reason, was particularly difficult. It’s probably because we’re starting the first full week being back from the holidays. It’s been nice having a day off in the middle of the week for a while, and there’s something daunting about looking at that calendar and knowing you’re in for the long haul of the regular grind.

And I was thinking about all of this when the cow’s butt popped up in my face.  Particularly, THIS cow’s butt:

Hemera
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It was just there. I had logged on to my company’s picture archive to find good pictures for my posts on this here website, and there it was. It jumped up and slapped me in the face like, “Bam, son! Look at my rump!”

You see, when you log on to this online picture archive, you get shown one picture from the archive at random. There’s no rhyme or reason to it – it just pops up. Apparently at some critical juncture, someone in our company had needed a picture of a cow’s butt with a milking machine attached, and that person dutifully placed that picture in the company archive – you know, just in case someone else could use it down the line. You never know when you’ll need cow butt.

For me, it was the last straw for my black-cloud Monday morning.

“I can’t do today,” I said to myself. “I just can’t. This is the universe showing me what kind of week I’m going to have. Nothing says, ‘Welcome to Monday, sucker’ like a big, nasty cow’s butt.”

And that was when a coworker said to me, “You know, for centuries, that’s how a lot of people’s Monday mornings have started. With a cow’s butt in their face.  A real one. And they didn’t have a nice milking machine, either.”

Touché, coworker.

It’s true, you know. I have all these nice computers in my office that I can see from a wonderful leather chair, while I slurp milk out of my cereal bowl and think bout the hamburger in the fridge for my lunch. Who's the cow's butt now?

So remember, when life shows you the cow’s butt, it’s just reminding you how lucky you are. And how lucky I am. I get paid to write this stuff, you know. Life is a wonderful thing.

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