The Day of Mars

  I'm inclined to view Tuesday as a sort of fragile, ill tempered kind of day. Monday gets all the flack, and having a reputation to uphold, has made outstanding efforts toward congeniality. Monday is usually kind, productive, and can carry on a friendly conversation. I picture Tuesday in the corner with a double shot whiskey, writing emo haiku.
  Tuesdays catch you off guard because you've just passed through Monday with mild surprise at her good manners and are left with a general sense of well being. This is exactly what Tuesday wants. Tuesday starts you off well and begins to gnaw quietly away at your happiness until you've not only forgotten what you came into this room to do, but it suddenly feels as if something terrible is about to happen. You wonder at this for a moment and go back to check your email because maybe that was what you were going to do but then you hear the neighbors dog barking and your mind is suddenly flooded with images of home intruders with machine guns and you hear a fighter jet fly by and listen intently, just in case this one was a bad guy and the bombs are now dropping. Then you make a plan for what you're going to do when this actually does happen. First, you carry a bread knife around, then you make a mental note of what you're going to text your husband or friend and where you plan to meet them. You write the text out, to save precious time. Then you think about how you and your son are going to get out of the house/city with only a motorcycle when all hell breaks loose. Would he be better on the front, or in the backpack being carried? You think the backpack would have too much wind. The phone rings and you jump and are pulled out of the Tuesday-mare.
  After checking everything off your to-do list and then adding more things and checking them off, you check the clock. 3pm. Tuesday has more minutes to the hour apparently. You decide to take your kid for a walk because Tuesday is also bad parent day and you're trying to appease your guilt at wishing he wanted to watch more TV or knew what cookies were so you could bribe him to watch more TV with them. The house is also seeming stuffy and you wonder if that's what happens when you have a carbon monoxide leak.
  You summon the most adventurous spirit you can muster from your disquieted soul and walk around your oatmeal and sometimes olive colored suburbia, hoping against hope to find something worth seeing. There are little bridges over a little ponds and cement tortoise lawn ornaments. There's the electric hum of a Toyota Prius driving around the streets behind you that all bear mildly regrettable names, in every case succeeded by the word "glen." Brickella-Glen, Salvia-Glen, Goldfish-Glen, etc. As if there is always a nameable valley you're about to come upon suddenly. Neighborhood watch signs are posted liberally vowing protection for you and your kin from everything save boredom and occasional gossip.
  You're walking to pass time and somehow the passing of seconds is easier to palate when paired with the passing of steps, but your mind is wandering again. You find yourself wondering what the difference is between Pipit-Glen Pl, Pipit-Glen Way, and Pipit-Glen Ct. and consequently, do the residents often mistake them? You wonder how many species of palm trees there are, and if there is a difference between a yellow fire hydrant and a red one? And can you park in front of a yellow one if you do so cautiously?
  Then you start making up stories about the people you see. The slightly hunched woman with the hook nose and chunky-heeled shoes, dressed entirely in black from the neck down. She's probably a Russian spy, or a librarian that hoards the best books and that's why you never got Harry Potter even though you had it on hold for 15 months. It's at this point, when the sun is setting and your reliable 72 degree weather is chilling slightly, that you catch a whiff of the smoke from some over enthusiastic holiday lover's fire and are instantaneously transported back to you parents house in wintertime. You're once again sitting in that dark room with the snow falling silently just outside the walls coating the world in a crisp blanket and making everything still. You and your siblings are scattered about the living room with stomachs full of casserole and hot chocolate and it never crosses your mind to worry about things like if it would be safer to go down the stairs or jump out the bedroom window if there was a sudden, violent earthquake destroying your house because you're just kids and you have parents to think about those things for you. You just sit there together and quiet and everyone watches the dance in the fire and everything is fine. Everything is overflowing with peacefulness. Everything is ok.