Sarah's Boss Says, "Can you do me a favor?" And Then This Happens.

Good evening!

I'm emerging from another bout of whatever this sickness is that's keeping me down the last couple of months.  I thought a good freeze would get rid of whatever bug was lingering from the fall and my over whelming feeling of exhaustion would go away if I drank enough water and got into bed at an earlier hour.

Well we've had a good freeze now, thank you and the combo of water and normal human bedtime has only helped my FitBit  since I now get up MORE during the night.  The good news is that my doctor has decided I'm "very anemic" and he's put me on a rather large does of iron supplements.  This has caused me to feel nauseous in addition to exhausted, and in the process I've lost nine pounds in the last four weeks!

That's a silver lining I can get used to!

Anyway, today was a weird day, even for me.  I got a phone call from my boss shortly before the end of my shift (and the start of my nap) asking me to print out a letter, go to the post office, and mail it priority.  He would normally do this, but he was on his way to the airport in another city and wouldn't be able to get this letter out and it needed shipping TODAY.

Not a problem. I could do this, run to the post office, which isn't far from my house, and get it all done really only a smidge past my normal quitting time,

I mean...what could possibly go wrong to hold me up?

Well let me write you a list:

First, print out the letter.

Okay.  I hate changing the printer cartridge in my printer because, well, I hate my printer.  If I could, I would take it out and bash it with a baseball bat ala "Office Space" because most days it's a little whiner and refuses to work properly if I push the "on button" with the wrong attitude.  Changing the ink cartridge is invasive and unless I get Hubby to do it, I wind up being without a printer for at least a couple days.

Why?

The alignment page.  I can print the front but I can't get it to print the back. I do exactly what that digital piece of monkey business tells me to in its tiny, tiny little instruction screen but I can't get it right.

Which is why today I was in a tizzy because I'd been delaying putting in a new cartridge for about...oh about a month.  I'd do that thing where you print one page and then wait an hour for the ink to sort of settle and then print another so you'd just get enough ink on each page where you can read it almost clearly in the perfect brightest light.

But I can't send a piece of paper with a bunch of ghost letters on it, can I?  No.  So I had to change the cartridge.

That did not go without incident. The alignment page befuddled me.  But the printer must have been in a magnanimous mood because right about the time I was screaming, "I AM putting this in face down your stupid piece of crap!"  It sent me a message saying it couldn't detect the alignment page and would now return to default print settings.

Ah....music to my ears.

So, letter printed.  Addresses set.  Coat on.  Purse in hand.

Next:  Get in the car.

Our driveway is a bit of a circus act for the neighborhood.  We can't park any of our cars in our tiny, over cluttered garage, (although hubby swears to me once the Christmas lights are up he'll make it so I can park in there. We told our neighbor that. He laughed really hard.) so all four of our cars are out on the drive.

The person who has to leave first (Hubby) is never the person last in the driveway so our day ALWAYS starts with someone moving someone else's car onto the street.

I always nose my car right up to the garage door perpendicular to two of the other three cars. Those two park next to each other with the last car at the back of the pack.  Once the morning move is done there are two cars in the drive:  Mine and one behind me.Today it was Peaches' car behind me. I hollered for her to come up and move her car.  I waited as she came upstairs and got her coat and shoes on.

Finally...LEAVE THE PROPERTY.


While Peaches and I  were exiting the house, Rocket got out.

Rocket is Peaches' cat, and new, sort of, to our family. He has escaped a few times from her previous domicile, and is always interested in THE DOOR, especially when it's been open. We've been quite careful when opening the door so that he doesn't get out, it hasn't been too much of a bother.

Until TODAY.

Today, when it was the coldest it's been in eleven months, Rocket darted out the door and into the freezing world for the first time. He immediately dove behind the row of shrubs we have outside our house.  The shrubs are four feet tall and four feet across, about fifteen feet long and very dense all the way to the ground.

Peaches stood  on one side, shaking a bag of treats. You've seen the commercial where the cats are tearing apart a room full of Christmas decoration and then someone shakes a bag of these treats and they all come running?   That's usually how it works with Rocket.

BUT NOT TODAY.

No, today he was determined to stay right in the middle of that row of shrubs.  It took us a few minutes of some quite creative cussing in cutesy "cat" voices to get him to come back to the house.  As Peaches dumped him in the house I turned to get into my car...and neither one of us made sure the screen door closed.

And out Rocket went AGAIN!

Another couple of minutes of louder sing songy cussing and treating shaking.

By the time I got into my car to go to the post office I was sweaty and flushed.  And this on top of the fact that I'd gotten up this morning PROMISING myself I wasn't going to leave the house, so I was dressed in my finest grey sweats, mussed hair (although it was clean, I get points for that) and very minimal make up.

That actual task of mailing the letter went off without a further hitch. I used to run the shipping department for an online toy store, so the post office is no mystery to me.  And, after further review, the delays really only added about ten minutes to the whole project.

It just seemed like more because time stops when you're fighting with a piece of office equipment or crawling behind your hedges saying all the words you tell your kids and your Sunday School classes not to use.

But at least I was saying them in a nice tone of voice.