I slept SO well last night. TOO well, I suspect, as it now appears that during that blissful downtime, the universe was working diligently to precisely align everything just so. Nothing on a large or disastrous scale, that is, as the universe knows those big issues don't throw me as off balance as the little ones do. It's things like having a shirt fall from a hanger while removing a different one, having the car ahead of me decide they can't make it through a changing light even though we both could have, or having a call drop when I'm leaving myself a message to remember something that I forget because I'm so irritated that the call dropped.... those little peeves add up quickly, and I had a few laid out for me to start my day today. Thanks, Universe.
I started the day searching in multiple locations just to find wearable clothing. Nothing new for most folks, as there's often clothes where they belong and clothes en route to where they belong in everybody's home. But in ours, kids clothes tend to intersect and redirect the flow of traffic, making it hard to track and locate things easily. No big deal though. But THEN I wasted 30+ minutes looking for something I seem to have misplaced at home; and not because it was something I *had* to have, but on principle alone, I had to find it. If there's a Top 10 list of things that make me rock in the corner while drooling and muttering, it's not being able to find something I need or want when I need or want it. Last night I had it in my hand when I walked in the door. Yet today it's nowhere to be found. Stuff like that makes me crazy. It makes me want to pick up and swing a chair through the front window because, hey, you know, that'll make everything better.
After 30 minutes of failed searching, I gave up. Strike one.
I started driving to work, leaving a voicemail at home to my wife, asking that she keep an eye out for it. But the voicemail ended up being me going off on a rambling tirade about being irritated, not being able to remember anything, blah blah whine whine blah.
SO, having just set up our new-fangled cordless phones and remembering the security code I'd set, I figured I'd just call back, punch in the code, erase the message and start over. Easy, right? Technology, right? Flawless..... right?
I dial. I hear our message. I press the code. I hear the automated machine say "Answer Off. Goodbye".
I turned off our answering machine. Now, not only would she arrive home to hear me blathering about how nothing works, that call to erase it not only didn't work, no incoming calls would be answered by our machine because of it.
Arrrrrgh. Strike two.
I made it to work just in time to get some much-needed food before heading to a meeting, only to find the main cafe area had been back-filled by dump trucks full of guest-badged visitors, all of whom had apparently not been fed during the two day's journey in the tarp covered dump truck beds. And the brain-trust who'd organized the gathering failed to consider giving more notice then the echo'd trampling of a stampeding heard of hungry guests might provide, leaving the cafe's culinary staff unprepared for the significant increase in hits to the bagel, muffin and coffee lines.
End result; spatterings of oatmeal beside the empty pot, a stale muffin with a thumbprint impression on the top and a small missing end portion adorned with what looked like "Magenta Passion" lipstick across its edge, and a still-spinning Cherrio on the floor were all that was to be found for yours truly to consume. Needless to say, I passed on all.
Strike three. Game over.
I know this is trivial bullshit. I know it's minimal with respect to many of the difficulties people encountered daily, in the US only, let alone any third world nations. I have so much to be grateful for that it's a pitiful and childish display of immaturity to be thrown by a few glitches at the start of one's day. So I've recovered, but at the time, stopping my feet and pounding on the ground while screaming 'Crap Crap Crap' just sounded like the right solution.