It’s kind of amazing I checked four items off my to-do list today, considering how sloooowly I was moving in the nearly unbearable heat. And these were not four namby-pamby make-work items that I put on the list just so I’d have something to cross off (though, as you know, I’m not above that). No, this was major stuff, serious tasks that I have to do every week to be able to say I did my job. Somehow, wilting and melting, I did my job today.

As usual, the secret is to do one thing after another. That sounds simple, but it’s so easy to get distracted. I was writing checks today (one after the other), but I have to feed the Boss’s paranoia by sending him copies of every check I write. And my new copier isn’t very fast, so while I’m waiting for it to spit out a copy, I find my mind wandering. Sometimes I’ll flip over to an open browser window, or play a quick game of Solitaire. Or three, because you can never play just one.

Somehow I managed to do enough things end to end today that I got through all the checks, and all the memos, and all the other stuff that I thought I wanted to have behind me before I face the weekend. Because the weekend is going to be a monster. I got hammered by Tim today for not being up to date with the cost reports. I took full responsibility and apologized, which took a little of the wind out of his holy wrath, but now I sort of have to do them. There goes my Friday, and probably most of Saturday and Sunday. Oh well.

The Boss has designated his ex-wife as the person who will pick up the slack from Julie’s departure. And since he is totally computer illiterate, that means when she asks him a question, he tells her to call me. The worst part of this is that she has Caller ID blocking, so I have to assume when my phone says “Private Caller” that she’s the one calling. This partially screws me up, but most of the calls I don’t want to take say “Out of Area,” and are from toll-free numbers.

I never, ever answer a call from a toll-free number, because it’s always a telemarketer or a credit card company or someone else I don’t need interrupting the smooth flow of my day. And I don’t know why the people in Mississippi can’t keep their Icee machines from going on the fritz, but I’ve stopped taking calls from there, because I can’t fix an Icee machine. There’s a shock, eh?

Okay, one of the four things I crossed off the list today was a phone call, but to me that’s a pretty big deal.