#2262 it's been a day

Today started out just fine. I got right out of bed and quickly got ready for work. I was so quick, I had a few extra minutes before I had to leave, so I read a few pages in my book. Always a nice way to chill and get prepare for the day.

Then I left the house.

My commute usually takes about 24 minutes. Today it took closer to 90 minutes. There was a car fire on the highway, so traffic was at a crawl. Since I was just sitting on the road, I checked the traffic app and that's when I found out about the fire. Unfortunately I was stuck in the middle lane going nowhere, so I put on Post Malone music and rocked out.

By the time I got up to the car that had been on fire, I could see that is was thoroughly burned. I hope the driver and passengers are safe. The car was a burned up shell.

I get to the office about half an hour late, turn on my computer, and am immediately swamped with stuff. A customer who needs a credit was calling. A co-worker wanted to know how and if he should respond to an email from a supervisor. Had I input an adjustment correctly? One of the customers was upset that we called them about money they owe us. The cost on some inventory items wasn't right. Had I sent in the backlog report? It was just one thing after another. It's not usually like that for me. Stuff comes along and I deal with it, and today it just all seemed to come in the first hour and took hours to handle.

Then, suddenly, it was noon.

I thought we'd be bringing in pizza today to work on a project, but the project was done, so no pizza. I hadn't brought lunch, so I had to leave to get some. That was fine and good. The only problem was that my right eye was twitching badly. It had been doing that since I'd been in the car that morning. Maybe it was the manifestation of anxiety (because I'm good now).  Eye be damned, I got in my car and went to Chick-fil-A where I happily ordered the Cobb salad, a Diet Coke, and a frosted caramel coffee. It was like a caramel coffee milkshake. Delicious. I could only drink half of it though. The sugar and the coffee weren't helping my eye twitch.

Back at work, I was finishing up my salad and reading a few pages of my book when I was confronted with another crisis. Tomorrow we (my fellow middle-managers and I) are preparing lunch for our team. We were planning to have soup in bread bowls. (Oh! I forgot to mention that it suddenly got really f'ing cold here. This morning it was 32 degrees and only warmed up to around 44 degrees.) The problem was that the store from which the soup was ordered called to say they would be unable to fill the order because the warehouse was out of soup and it wouldn't be in until Saturday. That will not do. We spent the next clump of time looking for restaurants who sold soup in bulk at a fairly reasonable price. We found some, so that crisis was handled. Then we talked about other office-related issues for awhile, although we didn't resolve very much, then it was back to my room where more mini-crises sprung up and had to be dealt with.

By 4:00, my brain was toast and my eye was twitching like a feather was tickling it. I stuck it out until around 4:45, and left the building.

The commute home was fine.

I decided to stop at Starbucks for a pumpkin spice steamer. The line at the drive-through was ten cars long, so I pulled into the parking lot and did the mobile order, thinking that I'd go inside and chill for ten minutes or so, get my drink and head home to participate in book club. 30 minutes later I was still waiting for my drink. When I had the gall to ask about it, I was told that they had "lots of mobile orders" and that they'd give me a refund if I didn't want to wait. I explained that I'd been sitting there for 30 minutes. Would they check to see if my order went through? With a sigh, they did check the long mobile order print out and there was my order, next in line, if you can believe it. Moments later I had my beverage and I was out the door.  <>

Everything got better once I got home. I put on some soft, cozy relaxin' clothes, fired up Twitter and participated in #Ekpesbookclub. We are reading The Boys in the Boat. I had some good comments, a few of which were liked by Ekpe, so that was cool. He asked for suggestions on the next book we will read. I immediately tweeted Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Several other members agreed and that's the book Ekpe picked! YAY! I've been wanting to read that book for months and haven't been able to get it at the library. It will be more fun to read with the club.

For dinner I made my favorite comfort food meal: eggs and potatoes. T got home from work just in time to eat with us, so that was nice. I even drank part of a beer to relax a bit and take the edge off the weird day. Now I'm fixing to get ready for bed and to read a little before I head to Sleepytown.

Hopefully tomorrow is a little more smooth. I didn't like today's rough edges.