Yuck Certified

Today has been one of those completely craptacular days that could put a girl in peril of forgetting how good her life really is! The worst thing is that the stress started even before I woke up. After a night of dreadfully depressing dreams, I woke up feeling like I'd been crying and was about to cry some more. Then, within a half an hour of waking up Ruby had a seizure.

Poor little noodle. I think she knows when one is coming on, because she usually comes to get me. Today was no exception. As I was checking my mail, she came at me from under the desk, trying to put her head in my lap. Generally a docile, unassuming dog, Ruby becomes very clingy just before a seizure. Her insistence on wanting attention ensured that I knew something was up even before she started to lose her balance. It's sweet, really, like she thinks I can protect her from what is about to happen. I can't protect her from seizures once they start, but I did manage to get down on the floor with her just in time for her to stumble into my lap. After that, all I could do was hold and pet her while she shook.

The thing about seizures is that they feel like they're going on forever, even when only a few minutes have passed. This episode lasted about 6 minutes total. The other animals are so sweet when she has them. Baxter hung around like a nervous parent, sniffing her and tentatively thumping his tail, while Toby just stood back watching. Once it was all over, Ruby was up and wanting to go outside to play. I swear they stress me out far more than they do her. Thankfully, she doesn't have them too very often. I know other people and animals who are a lot worse off.

Seizure over, before I knew it, it was past time to go to work. Even sacrificing a badly needed stop at Starbucks, I barely made it. Frankly, there was so much commotion that I don't think anyone would have noticed had I actually been late.

I arrived to a mailbox filled with a string of snarky e-mails between my boss and another department head, who we are assisting with a project. Working with her department is always a challenge as they have a tendency to ask for help, downplay what our role will be, then dump mounds of crap (seriously, it's CRAP - all the complicated, messed up things they can't figure out) on us, while they keep the easy tasks for themselves. Once the dust settled (insofar as it settles lately - these days my department is like a giant dust bowl), we'd inherited not only 300 accounts that need analysing, but 300 accounts that one of her employees had sat on for a month, which means lots of calls to irate people who have had a month to stew over their problems, because no one has bothered to help them. The worst part of it all is that none of this is actually my job (thank God); it's just a favor my department is doing for theirs.

Needless to say, the whole thing causes a lot of tension in my office. My boss is stressed and conflicted, because she doesn't like what the other department is doing, but is too politically correct to stand up for herself and call shenanigans. My coworkers are stressed and annoyed because we're being asked to do something that is so foreign to what we usually do and definitely NOT what any of us signed on for. My boss does try to help, even offering to tackle the potentially nastier calls for us, but it all makes for a heavy atmosphere. It's a good thing I either get punchy (silly and prone to laughing at things that really aren't funny, not prone to punching people) or borderline narcoleptic when I'm stressed. For most of the day, I managed to keep a sense of humor, by thinking about my lunchtime walk (at least until it was thwarted by a bizarre, fast moving rain - hail - snow storm that lasted for precisely for the duration of my lunch). Once lunch was over, I wanted nothing more than to just go home and go to sleep.

The afternoon didn't go much better, though most of that was my own doing. The low-light was when I managed to thoroughly screw up a report by erroneously thinking that if I did a VLOOKUP on a filtered spreadsheet, it would only affect the visible part. Silly me. I ended up having to reconstruct about an hour and a half of lost work from memory. Then, driving home, looking at the lovely, pale, full moon made me think of someone whose memory makes me feel melancholy. Then, I managed to get into a totally unnecessary snark off with my mother via cell phone. Thanks to modern technology, I don't have to be physically present to get my grump on. Go Verizon!

Now it is 8 p.m. and I feel like it's about 2 a.m. I can't imagine doing anything more with my evening than maybe having a drink and going to bed. My soul feels pale and wraithlike, like if I looked in the mirror, I'd have the dark under eye circles of someone not accustomed life in the light. At this point, I just want a do over. At this point it's just best to go to bed knowing that tomorrow will be better. Oh yes, the end of the week is looking pretty good from my presently headachy and bleary eyed vantage point.

So, again I have not posted what I planned. Sometimes a person just needs to vent. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to that clever post that will make you all envious of my brilliance. For now, if you're still here, thanks for reading. I'm off to make a nice beverage and get lost in a book until I fall asleep.