It doesn’t take much to throw me completely off track. I had my whole week planned out, and I was going to get everything done in spite of the holiday in the middle. Or maybe because of it, I don’t know. At least I know the phone won’t be ringing all day Wednesday.

But it rang this morning, at 8:15 am. If only the Boss knew how that threw off my equilibrium. I don’t wake up easily, and it takes me most of the morning to get going. That’s why I don’t much mind when he calls me at 7:00 pm (he did that today, too). But if I get a call before, say, 10:00 am, it means that at some point in the afternoon I’m going to hit a wall and have to stop for awhile. Or for good. Either way, it’s bad for the momentum.

Then I found out why he called. I wasn’t quite alert enough to process it, but it seems he made me an appointment to meet his ex-wife in front of Wal-Mart at noon, so that I could hand over to her the extra fax machine that was shipped to me by mistake (and that I’ve been using as a copier). So I packed up the machine, and thank goodness I’d kept the box, and spent twenty minutes chatting with the Ex in the Wal-Mart parking lot, then came home and did this week’s payroll, which has to go out a day early because of the holiday.

It wasn’t that I had to drive out of town, although I was hoping to make it past the holiday before I had to gas up my car, and now I don’t think I will. It was more that I’d planned on going to the bank and the supermarket (which the bank is inside of) this morning, so that I wouldn’t have to do all that tomorrow, the day before the holiday. You see? It’s all about time management, and it was taken out of my hands. It threw me off track for today, and it ratchets down to the rest of the week.

And now, in the palpable absence of Julie (or anyone who could do what she’s been doing), the Boss has recruited his ex-wife to help with some of the tedious paperwork involved in bidding state work in California. I used to do that, but I didn’t offer to take it up again. I didn’t offer to talk the Ex through the process of downloading a bid package off the state’s web site, but I ended up spending half my afternoon doing that anyway. I can’t quite seem to come out a winner here, except for the fact that I still have a job. Now if only it would leave me alone to do itself, I’d be happy.