I should have recognized that vile and evil forces were strong last week and just stayed in bed with the covers over my head. The whole week was going to h-e-double toothpicks and it was only Tuesday.

   Things started out normally on Monday. I was prepped, ready, and heading towards CSUB to teach my 7 am English class. (Yes – you read that correctly. Seven. O’clock. In the morning.)  The upside of having an early morning class (and there is only ONE upside) is that parking is not a problem. I can park anywhere I want. This has been the highlight of my days on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the past two quarters. Sad, isn’t it?

   I parked, looked lovingly back at my primo parking spot, and trotted off to class to prepare the room for the spell-binding and life-changing lecture and activities I had planned to dazzle my students.

   They trickled into the room with the tale-tell signs of young college freshmen, yawning, rubbing their eyes, not realizing that they were still sporting the “I just rolled out of bed” hairstyles, and plopped down in their seats. I flicked on the PowerPoint I’d spent a couple of hours preparing - it was soooo cool!  There were people moving around, gears turning, sparkles – and I began talking. The PowerPoint was even better on the big screen in the classroom. “This is awesome!” I thought.

   When I turned on the lights, half of the class was asleep. Some still had their eyes open, but I knew they were checked out.

   Same story in my next two classes. I tried not to take it personally, telling myself, “Hey, it’s not you – it’s them.”

   That didn’t work back in the day when a guy was breaking up with me, and it doesn’t work now.

   “Well,” I thought, “that delicious dinner in the Crock Pot will be ready to serve my hungry younglings when I get home, so I’ve got that going for me.”  Just one problem. I forgot to turn on the Crock Pot.

   Chips and salsa were the main dish that night.

   The next day I had to go to the DMV to renew my driver’s license because I got a letter saying that they needed to take another picture and check my fingerprints (you know, just in case my fingerprints had changed sometime over the past 8 years).

   As you know, going to the DMV is never on anyone’s top ten list of “Things I Can’t Wait To Do Today” (or even the top 500 list), but I had an appointment so things were moving pretty quickly. The young woman at the window I was called to was pleasant and even chatty, so I started thinking, “This hasn’t been bad at all.”  I thought too soon.

   She handed me a print out of the information on my current license - eye color, hair color, address, weight, height - and asked me to look it over. I read it and handed it back, saying, “Everything looks good.”

   That’s when it happened. The demons that had been at play trying to undermine my confidence and self-esteem since Monday took over the pleasant young woman’s body and made her say, “Are you sure you don’t want to change your weight?”