When I get back from my morning errands each day, the first thing I do is check the answering machine to see if there are any messages. After that, since I got Caller ID, I’ve been checking the phone to see if I have any missed calls. My perfect day would include no messages and no missed calls, because that would mean no one knew I wasn’t at home, working. It would also mean that nobody missed me, but that’s a lesser matter.

Today, for reasons beyond my control (more or less), I was way late getting back, so I was hoping more than ever for no messages, no missed calls. Alas, I had three messages to listen to, and six missed calls. Everybody wanted a piece of me, at the very time I felt rushed, frazzled and stressed out. I spent the next long minutes returning phone calls and answering urgent (ha!) requests, and by the time I was ready to get on with the real work of the day, it was already the middle of the afternoon.

I wasn’t planning on being that late, but I got caught in a tremendous cloudburst and had to pull over because I couldn’t even see out the car windshield. I made it to the post office, but I was parked across the street from my destination, trapped in my car, for a good twenty minutes, waiting out the sudden shower. I knew it would blow through because I could see blue in the sky all around me. It was just right here right now that the heavens were that wide open.

Eventually the rain let up enough that I was able to walk across the street without getting drenched (and without soaking the mail I was sending before I could get it into the box). And wouldn’t you know, the rest of the day was mild and mostly sunny. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or really, it was the right place, but the wrong time, because at the right time, I was somewhere else.