Original illustration of 'Alexander and the Terrible...' by Ray Cruz. Click my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad highly-altered photo to see his work.
If I could go back and relive yesterday, I would just suggest that the Lord smack me in the forehead with a mighty, divine hammer at the exact moment I attempted to get out of bed.
My entire yesterday was just one big ball of grumplepuss. It was one of those days in which nothing particularly insurmountable crosses your path, but every step is a minor, annoying obstacle, and at the end of it all you just want to scream and run into a cave to hibernate, ashamed.
The thing about my job is that 80% of it is fake. Part of being a good assistant is faking happiness if it doesn’t come naturally to you. And let’s face it: when you’re an assistant, cheery is not your default setting. When people call, they like to hear a chipper, pleasant voice on the line. They don’t want to hear mine. And the problem is that sometimes I forget that my boss doesn’t realize that my job heavily relies on my Acting degree.
So on a day like yesterday, when I woke up after another mere 4 hours of sleep, went unshowered, biked to work in the rain, showed up late, needed a coffee break at 9am instead of 11am, and realized that I had set my blog to automatically post at 9:0o am on the wrong day entirely, I had just a few annoyances on my mind. I wasn’t on my A-game when the boss called and I accidentally slipped into my regular, dry tone of voice.
I’m sure you all have a pretty good idea by now of what that might sound like.
She instantly recognized the perklessness and began an investigation into my state of mental health. One of my biggest peeves is someone trying to convince me that I feel a way that I don’t really feel and then acting like my denial is just a first step of the process of acceptance.
I’m not grieving. I just forgot to be perky.
By noon, work was such a mess of small inconveniences that I just couldn’t fathom how I’d survive five more hours. I’d been asked to do things I didn’t feel like doing, realized I didn’t do things I thought I had, got asked questions I didn’t know the answers to and got more phone calls in one day than I had the entire week before added together. I’d also managed to suck so badly at my 80% acting that I was asked by 3 more people how my day was going and if I was all right. So at noon, I figured I’d take a walk around the block to hit the reset button.
I was greeted by rain and promptly went back to my desk to mourn.
By 5pm, I was ready to bust a move out of there. I found my stinky attitude embarrassing and exhausting. I had precisely 1 hour to grab something to eat and bike over to my editor so that I could kick out some decent work our short film. I used the entire hour, hoping to outlast the rain but it continued to fall, mocking me. Annoyed and cold but full of mesquite turkey and hope for a decent evening, I pedaled out into the torrential downpour to face the wrath of rush hour bike-haters on my way to my editor’s. My butt got wet, my underwear was a goner, and the dirty water that got splashed on my shins and flicked up into my face had become so repetitive that I gave up entirely and pedaled faster through the muck.
Note to self: get fenders.
I showed up to my editor’s place at 6:15 and called him to let me in but he didn’t pick up. I was proud of the fact that I biked there in the rain like a real trooper. I was absolutely soaking wet and miserable, but I was there. I stood in the rain, knocking on his door and was greeted by his roomies – most of whom I didn’t know but let me in and showed me a lovely cup of tea while I waited.
At 6:30 I got a call back from my editor, who was surprised to find out I was at his place seeing as how we didn’t have a meeting scheduled that night.
…What?
I schedule. Scheduling is what I do. I get paid to make and remember meetings. How did I completely fail at my own agenda? I even fed the cats extra food to make sure they’d have enough to make it through dinner. And I packed enough food and extra gear on my back to get me through the long day. And…and…I rode there in a torrential downpour!
Turns out I had my weeks mixed up and was completely wrong. So after I finished my tea I promptly got back on my bike and rode home, quads burning, soaked with dirty water, and hauling 5 pounds of extra gear that I never needed to pack in the first place. I was burping up mesquite turkey and shame. I had big plans to go home and feed my desire to regenerate from my ball of grumplepuss.
Instead I got home and realized it was already 7pm and I hadn’t accomplished anything whatsoever. My cats were so excited to see me that they walked directly in front of my paths as I went through my apartment and I accidentally kicked one of them in the face. Feeling incredibly guilty and defeated, I coaxed her out of her concussive state and went to the bathroom to take a shower and cry like a little girly girl.
Afterward, I curled up to watch a good government conspiracy movie because apparently that’s my idea of a good time in my old age. In the middle of it, my brother called and I was excited that at 9:00pm I had finally found the turning point in my day. Unfortunately my call with him led to a call to my parents in which unpleasantries were discussed and I somehow managed hanging up the phone feeling like a sad and foolish piece of human flesh.
In a last attempt to fight the grumps, I got out a brand new bottle of bright orange nail polish and gave myself a neon pedicure. Turns out the seal had already been broken and the color was runny and weak. But I was stubborn and hell-bent on neon, so I painted the roses red regardless.
Finally in the wee hours of the morning, I’d resigned all attempts to make my evening any better and trudged to bed with my unimpressive toenails, my wet, dirty street clothes strewn about the house, and a box of Girl Scout Cookies half-eaten and kicked under the couch in a last-ditch effort at redemption. And finally, when my head hit the pillow, I found the silver lining to my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day:
At least I didn’t have to scrounge up a blog topic. ♣
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Tags: 365 Project, blogging, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011
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