9 to 5-ing it

As my morning bus was whisking me away to the subway to begin yet another humdrum work day, I was feeling tired, grumpy, and just not in a very pleasant mood (as a disclosure, I'm decidedly not a morning person and feel that those who wake up with a bounce in their step should be punched to see if they bounce back). To make the morning worse, the morning bus was late leaving me and my fellow bus friends shivering in the chilly Winter morning and once we boarded, the heat in the bus wasn't working so the temperature inside was akin to a meat locker.

Around the halfway mark of the commute, more passengers get on board limiting the conversation between me and my bus friends, not that discussions on the poor bus condition, the weather, and home renovations was that fascinating to begin with, so at that point we all brought out our newspapers, books, and, in my case, my trusty iPod, given as a gift from my parents two Christmases ago. I put my earphones in, clicked on the "Shuffle Songs" mode, and let it play.

We rounded a corner and passed by an open field when the sun was able to shine without being blocked by the tall Oak trees that grow in my town bathing all of the passengers in a piercing pure light. At that exact moment, a kicky drum beat began followed by a dobro, fiddle, guitar and piano, bringing to mind an image of a bunch of bearded men sitting on wooden crates in an old barn getting ready for a hoe down. Then, Alison Krauss's dulcet voice begins crooning the classic lines to Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" and I think to myself, "Maybe this day won't be so bad after all."

By the time the song was fading, we arrived at the subway station to board the train that carried me the rest of the way to my windowless closet office. Thanks to the power of that song, I skipped up the steps two at a time ready to face the whatever the day had in store for me.