So the Boss phones me this morning (yes! on a Saturday! morning!) and starts his pitch right away. “I don’t know if you feel like helping us out,” he begins ominously, “but Tim and I are looking at this new job up in the Sierra. If we wait for the paperwork to go through its normal channels, we won’t be able to start for months, because the bad weather is coming. Right now it’s perfect up there, so I want to try to put a rush on the state to give us the go-ahead.”

Whew! And where do I come into all this, so that I’m being asked to give up my day off? After all, Saturday is the day to watch English football (I’m a Manchester United supporter and a Chelsea hater). Saturday is the one day I might be able to find time to read without the phone ringing in the middle of every other sentence. (I’ve just started the new Alexander McCall Smith, The World According to Bertie.) Saturday is the Day of the Recliner.

The facts are these: The company needs all the work it can get, the sooner the better. The insurance company sent the bonds for this new job to the Boss, even though they have to be signed (and sealed) by me, so he mailed them to me Thursday and then decided just today that the process of signing (and sealing) needed to be expedited. Which made it my problem.

It was my problem, that is, based on the assumption that if I went to the post office today, the bonds would be there, and I could sign (and seal) them and find a way to get them back to him by Monday, when he would take them to Sacramento and presumably bully the government into forgoing a few steps (a longshot, unless you know his style). This is good because we could keep our work crew together and be able to bill for progress on the new job before we completely run out of money.

And why is this important? To me, that is? Well, the matter of my Christmas bonus hasn’t been settled yet. The Boss at one time said he would loan the company his own money if necessary to pay bonuses, which I believe he meant at the time. But who knows if he remembers saying it? He has selective dementia, and is rather proud of it.

In fact, the bonds were waiting for me at the post office. I brought them home, signed (and sealed) them, and took them to the UPS store, because that’s the closest place to send something overnight on a Saturday, when the windows at my post office are closed. When I got back home, I was able to tell the Boss that he will have the bonds by 10:30 Monday morning. He gave me one of those speeches about what a miracle worker I am, and I hung up the phone thinking, Yeah, that’s why I did it. So he could call me a hero.