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Shouldn’t I know by now that I can’t make “plans”? Any agenda is entirely dependent on the whims of (a) the Boss, (2) my sleep habits, and (c) fate. Or luck, if you want to put it less fatalistically. Luck has so much to do with everything that happens, and it’s so random that “plans” are best written in pencil. Virtual pencil, even.
What I’m saying is, I thought I knew how my day was going to go, and then an unbelievable confluence of catastrophes sent it careering in another direction altogether. Plans were strewn willy-nilly along the muddy road of life, only to be gathered up with the hope that the next attempt will be more successful, because it has to be, because there are things that have to be done no matter what gets in the way.
It’s hard not to wonder what I might have done — me, personally — to make this day better. Short of changing my whole personality, I’m not sure. I’m a night owl, and last night was a particularly late one, only because the cues I take to know when it’s safe to go to bed didn’t happen until the wee hours were already turning into the predawn hours. There’s no use retiring if I’m going to toss and turn, so I don’t. So I oversleep the next morning and get a late start on the day. That wreaks havoc with plans of all kinds.
The best thing would have been to make different plans in the first place. Going in, I knew this was going to be the fifteenth day of the month, the day I do both the Kennel payroll and the Kennel billings, labor- and time-intensive undertakings best accomplished with an extra block of time allotted for them. It was also going to be Tuesday, payroll day for the Company. That’s the most exhausting thing I do all week, every week. What was I thinking, making any other plans?
Never could I have foreseen the other monkey wrench. It’s not even the Boss’s fault. He’s actually doing the hard work on getting us paid for a job we finished earlier this month. My only part is telling him when he’s veering off course in the paperwork he’s trying to get from subcontractors. I’ve done our part, and I know what the State is looking for. When I see someone else’s mistake, it’s my job to let him know how to fix it. Then he deals with whomever he has to deal with. I had no warning that this would take up so much time on a day when that commodity was this precious.
With all this in mind, I can’t blame the Boss for how screwed up the day turned out, especially after his almost generous bonus check last week. It was almost enough to almost pay off my credit card debt, which I almost did, and now it’s completely gone. But still, I have to be grateful, and I am. It does make it easier to take all the hoo-hah and folderol, nearly as much as it makes it harder to complain about it. |
