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There wasn't much to do after yesterday but hope that today would be better. Hoping all the problems would go away wasn't an option. Hoping they'd be more manageable after a fair night's sleep was more realistic. Each day brings its own set of challenges, and if I let them overwhelm me nothing gets resolved.
It's a real blessing when my biggest (current) problem gets taken off the table without my having to do anything. That's the kind of thing that can make all the other little calamities swarming around seem less like serious threats and more like nuisances. Once you get the monster out from under the bed, the dust bunnies become the balls of fluff they really are, instead of whatever horrors your mind has turned them into.
Where was I? I think I got carried away again.
Imagine my delight when Tim called today and told me that the doctor had decided that our employee's injury had nothing to do with work. And the kid agrees, so he won't be pursuing our worker's compensation insurance for, uh, compensation. I'm sorry he got hurt and all, but if he did it boogalooing at the bistro, I don't feel responsible. That wasn't covered in our "safety meeting."
I had to confess to Tim that as much as I didn't relish taking the time to fill out paperwork on this claim, I'm even more relieved that I don't have to make any phone calls. I told him I'd do two full days of paperwork to avoid making a ten-minute phone call, and it's true. I like to repeat it once in awhile, just so people know that any task requiring me to use the telephone will probably get put off as long as possible.
The day was crammed with good news, actually. The Boss is on the road (collecting money, supposedly), so I didn't get a stream of faxes interrupting the flow of work. And we've scored big in the collections department. I now have enough to pay all the past due company bills, and even pay back some of the money we had to borrow to keep from getting any further past due.
I had one of those calls this afternoon, from a supplier who hasn't been paid yet. When they call, I always tell them they have to talk to the Boss, and I promise to give him the message. That way I can look up the invoices calmly, without anyone hanging on the other end of a phone line. When he calls them back, he can have all the information he needs to put them off a little longer.
In this case, though, the supplier is going to be paid tomorrow, as soon as I can get the big check into the company bank account. For once when he calls he can give them good news, instead of explaining why they have to wait. He should be happy about that.
The news would be even better if I'd taken the time to write their check today so I could put it in tomorrow's mail. That doesn't seem right to me, though. All the people we legitimately owe are going to be paid, in order of the age of the invoice. I don't think I should put someone up to the head of the line just because they're the ones calling and complaining. That penalizes the people who know that we always pay our bills and wait patiently for their checks.
Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but if I pay everybody what's due them as soon as I can, I can't see rewarding the ones that make me work harder by having to look up their account and prepare the Boss to phone them back. All the wheels are going to get greased, whether they squeak or not, because that's how we keep the machine running. | 
