12:28 p.m. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that people are really surly and snappish and just plain ornery on Mondays? I've often wondered why this is ... and I've got a few theories that I'd like to suggest here. Please don't bite my head off -- these are just my little lousy measly ideas.

I happen to work at home. The transition for me between Sunday night and Monday morning is not too traumatic. You know: I go to bed Sunday night, read a little more of Cryptonomicon, my trusty old buddy by now, and then I fall asleep, get up, come into the office and voila! It's Monday. You can get used to it.

But since both Igor and I have to deal with those folks who drive to work, Mondays have become quite tense for us, here at the receiving end of phone calls and emails. You see, if an office worker blows in late and disheveled on a Monday morning, crashes and smashes things around the office, sighs loudly and often ... everyone else in the place knows to stay away. This person is on a rampage.

Those of us who work at home do not see the storm warnings nor hear the sounds of thunder. We're whistling as the tea or coffee perks and poking at the bird feeder or moving a sleeping kitty away from the Turbomouse and settling all wide-eyed and eager into our comfy used execu-chairs. Nobody warns us with frantic gestures or furtive notes and so we pick up the phone or pull down the email with a certain lame naiveté and just as sure as shootin', get it right between the eyes with both barrels.

It happens every single Monday. The pal you joked with on Friday afternoon is suddenly all business and distressingly snippy. The person you haven't talked to in ages wonders why you're calling Now, all of a sudden. Email you eagerly sent out comes back with uncharacteristic one-word replies: yes. no. don't know. don't care. drop dead.

Now, I don't know about other people who work at home, but Mondays always makes me feel even more nervous than usual about my little lifestyle decision here. And nervousness engenders a lot of soul-searching, and if you search long enough, you do come up with some theories. Here's mine.

I believe that people who travel to work often experience a severe dissonance between their two lives, most noticeable on Monday mornings. Often, the workplace is a whole lot nicer than the home. Better carpets, quicker services, snazzy phone and security systems, instant interface with deliveries, messengers, couriers, and of course the bottomless carafe of coffee. Offices have scented liquip soaps and plastic strips to cover exposed wires and fresh flowers and fuzzy stuffed Garfield dolls stuck to the most expensive machinery that money can buy. There's sometimes mahogany; there's often tinted glass and loads of pushbuttons.

Many of the office workers have just come from sticky car seats and tossed beds and unfinished Blockbuster movies in half-furnished living rooms, so of course they feel cranky when they unlock their desks and look at their inboxes -- they both love and hate the switchover. They're dressed up, by now, so they must be somewhat civil to anyone within earshot, but they still have to let off steam ... so guess who they call?

Me, of course. The person in the fuzzy slippers.

I think it would really be helpful if more offices did what the little nursery school on my block does. Every day at around two in the afternoon, they draw the curtains and put their clients down for a nap. The ones with liquid refreshment requirements have just been satisfied; the ones who don't need to stop off at the bathroom don't.

A feeling of calm pervades the place. Feathers get smoothed and brows unfurrowed. Personalities are transformed and the screamers stop ululating and the whiners stop whimpering and the hitters stop pounding. The workplace nappy-poo. It's an idea whose time has come.

Tomorrow. It's Tuesday. I always get a lot of apologies on Tuesday.