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For the first time all week, I think I can breathe. I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure. Maybe I've forgotten how. Or maybe I shouldn't, just on general principles. Breathing only leads to consciousness, and nothing good can come from that. I have the bruises to prove it.
Today was so tense I was squeezing it out of my pores. In fact, I spent a few painful minutes dealing with stomach cramps, brought on by not knowing if everything would come together on time. Or maybe it was a bad sausage, but I'm going with stress. If it was sausages, I must have been eating way too many of them lately.
The bid form I've been working on has to be in San Francisco by two o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Since I'm not about to drive it down there in person, I had to get it in the overnight express mail by three o'clock today. But you can't complete a bid unless you get prices in from suppliers and subcontractors, and everybody wants to be the last one to submit their prices. That tends to take things to the deadline.
The deadline came and I was bouncing off the walls. I mean, even more than usual. I don't do the estimating, so all I could do was wait for the Boss to fax me the last bit of information, so I could type it into the form and head off to the mailbox store.
It's always a question of how productive it would be to phone the Boss and ask him for what I need. He complains about being interrupted, and I know how that feels, so I try not to bug him unless I'm convinced it's the only way. He told me earlier this week that he always thinks twice before he calls me. It's no wonder there's a communication gap in the company.
Obviously (since I'm still here and totally together), everything came through on time, I got off to the mailbox store and put this project behind me. I have so much leftover paper that I could make a tree out of it (and you know I live in redwood country). But I have to save it all as backup and store it somewhere in my cluttered house. Between first drafts and final copies, I can fill up a file box with the records from this bid alone.
But (as I keep forgetting) it's over! It hasn't been the only thing on this week's agenda, but it's been the biggest. The uncertainty has made it the hardest to cope with. Now that it's done, I can plan the rest of the week better. The plan is to get through all the work I put aside to get to this point, and to make it to the audit Friday in one piece. I can pay bills, finish the cost reports I started over the weekend, vacuum, dust, eat another sausage.
Best of all, I can breathe. (I think.) | 
