Convinced that somehow my life would miraculously turn into a lush, tropical garden, I woke up this morning only to find myself back in emotional Siberia. Maybe it happened because I expected the Boss, who knows what I’m up against, to lay off me today, instead of bombarding me from the crack on with the petty problems that he suffers from due to his own inadequacy.

That is, he can’t download pdf files from the computer, because he doesn’t know how to connect to the Internet, because he is unable to turn on a computer. Which is a moot point, since he doesn’t even own a computer. Except mine, which he made full and endless use of, all day long. So his inadequacy extends to the point where I start picking up the slack, which I do willingly when I’m not standing against a wall with a firing squad of deadlines pointed at me. I could have used a blindfold.

And frankly, I’m not all that adequate myself. In fact, I’m a little stupid when I’m trying to do eight (or even two) things at once. He needed some sheets from the pdf file printed at his local Kinko’s, so I tried to email the file to them. But the file is a thrillion kilobytes and a quillion pages long, and my poor Internet connection couldn’t handle it. It took me awhile to realize I could send Kinko’s the link to the file and let them do the rest.

If that had been the only thing I was trying to do today, I might have been all right. But I had three big tax reports to finish, and none of them came out right on the first run-through (which only goes to show that today wasn’t the only day I’d been a little stupid), and every time I’d think I was getting somewhere, I’d get waylaid by a phone call. You spend the whole day like that, it makes you think you shouldn’t have got out of bed at all.

Eventually the day more or less ended on, if not a high note, at least a fairly undistorted tone. All those files didn’t crash my new computer, although I did have to do some fast task managing and restarting of programs. The Boss seems satisfied; I only hope for Kinko’s sake that they printed the right pages of that file for him.

And I’m left with two tasks to do before the deadline, neither of which I can finish until I get information from third parties, who will take the blame if it doesn’t all come together on time. They know who they are, and they know what’s at stake. I don’t have to say another word about it to them, but I will anyway. There’s no use fanning the flames when there’s an extinguisher close at hand.