There are Mondays, and then there are Mondays. I just had one of the latter.

I woke up the morning after Father's Day a bit fuzzy-headed, the result of a late night with friends — cooking, sipping wine and — for two of us — recalling our deceased dads. One of my friends is in the early years of his 10th decade. So generally I pick him up and take him home, though he's certainly capable of driving. He only lives a couple of miles from me, but I feel safer serving as his chauffeur.

Anyway, when we went to leave I borrowed another friend's car to take him home, because it was parked behind mine and had me blocked. I came back and resumed an evening of conviviality that perhaps lasted a bit longer than appropriate on a work-week night. So it goes. To quote one of my songwriting heroes, Warren Zevon, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." I guess Warren is getting plenty of sleep now, having left this orb a few years back.

My friend headed home. I went to sleep, woke up at 6 a.m. and walked my usual three miles. Read the paper, showered, etc. then figured out I had locked my keys in the car, in the garage. That's a really crummy, "You're an idiot" feeling, but one I've experienced on more than a few occasions.

I've been meaning to:

1) Buy a new garage door remote to keep inside the house. The other one disappeared a couple months ago. I blame Maggie the cat. She has batted it into some random dark spot.

2) Take the spare key to the garage side door off the extra key ring inside my glove compartment and put it in the house.

3) Do the same with the extra key to my car, which is also in my glove compartment. I know. That's a dumb place to keep extra keys.

So I called a locksmith to get me into the garage. He showed up quickly and within seconds had picked the lock of the garage entry door. I paid him $60 and thanked him effusively. You must pay for your mistakes, even if it only takes a few minutes to fix them. I quickly took out my spare key ring and pulled off the extra garage door key to put inside the house, for the next time I make this mistake. Several folks have keys to my back door, so somebody can let me inside next time I mess up.

It was most definitely Monday. I would like to tell you that things improved as the day advanced, but they didn't. I just won't share the details. You might recommend that I be committed.

When I chunked the spare key chain back into the compartment, I apparently hit the "lock" key on the extra car keyfob. I heard the "thunk" of the locks and peered inside the tinted windows of my liberal-mobile, a Ford Escape Hybrid. I hadn't retrieved my original set of keys yet from where they perched on the middle console. Now I had locked both sets of car keys inside the car. Sheesh.

At least I still had my cell phone in hand. I called the locksmith back and explained that my doofus streak was running a mite strong this morning, and I had just locked both sets of car keys inside. Luckily he was only a few blocks away and came right back. He popped the door lock in a jiffy and kindly declined to charge me any more money. I would have paid another fee, figuring one always has to ante up for stupidity.

I have paid locksmiths plenty of money through the years, to liberate cars everywhere from Galveston to Boston, Austin to Lufkin. I must admit this is the first time I've had to call one twice in a matter of minutes.

It definitely was Monday, all day long.

Gary Borders is publisher of the Longview News-Journal. His e-mail address is gborders@coxlnj.com.