The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day...

Oy vey!  What a day!  I could not sleep from about 1:45 am on.  I had a lot of work on my mind, and the wee hours are not the time to problem solve.  My coworkers and I often talk about the accounting stuff that we each remember to do at 3am.  I fell back to sleep about 1/2 hour before the alarm went off.  By this time a certain little schnauzer had decided that she was cold and wanted up on the bed.  I opened my eyes in the darkened room to the silhouette of two pointy ears and the sound of some general sniffing in the direction of my head.  She cuddled up under the blankets with me and seemed to make me just comfortable enough to fall back to sleep for a little while, but I woke up with a vicious headache and a little black storm cloud over my head.

I was functioning well as I got myself to get together.  However, I went to put my favorite pair of sunglasses on my head.  (They make me look like a movie star!) They broke right in half.  I was momentarily sad but got into the car and went.  

Work was sort of crazy.  I have several bank accounts that I manage and today I needed to get the largest one reconciled in order to meet a big deadline.  There are literally hundreds of transactions that I need to account for.  I needed to get it done before an afternoon meeting with my boss.  So I hunkered down.  About an hour into my work, my computer screen froze and I had to restart my machine.  I lost about an hour of work.  Okay, no biggy.  

So I worked for about 5 more hours straight (I do not take my lunch hour until really late in the day.)  That was when it happened.  My screen went black.  I called over the person who manages our computers who announced that my computer was kaput and could not be resuscitated. All of those hours of work were gone.  I seriously considered throwing myself on the floor, a la two year old having a tantrum, and crying, screaming and generally causing my office mates to yet again doubt my sanity.  I thought my headache was going to cause my head to explode.  But I stopped and took a breath, and remembered that there are people around the world who were having a far worse day than me.  There are people who were hungry, or sick or dying.  My problem was nothing in comparison.  There are people in the world who would have traded problems with me in a red hot second.  Ultimately, I realized that I was pretty lucky all in all.  My family is healthy, I have a job, etc.  My boss told me that she has had that happen too so she felt my pain and that I should go to go to lunch.  It was a beautiful day so Liesl and I got into the car and drove to a beautiful park.  It was sunny and breezy.  My head hurt too much to get out and walk today, so I rolled down the window, after I parked the car.  Liesl climbed into my lap so she could watch the birds out the window.  I just rested the side of my head on her warm little back, closed my eyes, and breathed in the sunshine.  It did the trick and gave me a total attitude adjustment.

When I got back, my boss said that they were already working on ordering my new computer and that she had said to staff to do everything to make sure that there is no delay for in getting it in and up and running.  She is out of the office tomorrow until the afternoon so I can use her office in the meantime. 

After my epiphany about how not important this whole thing was in the scheme of the world, things took a magical turn for me and I saw things much better.  I took the more scenic road home from work,  I ran into my friend from work in line at the pharmacy at Safeway.  He works in another location so we don't get to talk often, so it was nice to chat and catch up and before long we were cracking jokes and laughing.  I came home to see my very favorite episode of 30 Rock was on (the one with Elvis Costello and Adam Levine.)  It makes me laugh out loud.  Then I looked out the window and watched the most beautiful, take your breath away sunset through my living room window.  I played Liesl's favorite wrestling game with her monster puppet which made her happy.  Then I got into my bed and  under all of the covers.  All in all, this turned out to be a fantastic day, full of blessings, love and miracles.  I just had to stop and see it that way.