Yesterday Was A Test of the Internal Emergency Broadcast System

Had this been a real emergency, you would have been instructed where to find the remnants of my head and encouraged to send copious amounts of tequila and other possibly consoling sundries to my grieving friends and family.

I’m exaggerating, as is my wont; and yet if there was a day designed to test my fortitude, it was yesterday.

Patience is not my long suit. Hard to picture, isn’t it? Now, I’m not talking about instant pudding here (although it can’t hold a candle to real pudding – don’t get me started on the beauty of a real pudding!). I’m talking about when the normal things one does take three to four times as long as they usually do.

Take the computer for example. I often have a medium-sized obelisk-style pile of paper that must be "inputted", as they say, to the computer. I’ve gotten this sort of thing down pat – I know how many “tabs” to where I need to go next, I know how much I can enter at any given time, I know how far ahead of myself I can get before the computer gets crabby with me, and I know when I’ll be done so I can go on to the next scintillating project.

Now take the same medium-sized obelisk-style pile of paper that I need to enter into the computer, only this time put one of my arms in a sling, put the data in another language and drop some LSD into my coffee. That’s how I felt yesterday, minus the signatures of my friends on the plaster or the accompanying potential fun/hazards of tripping at work.

I’m a Type A personality, folks. I have Things To Do.

Very Important Things.

As a matter of fact, I was told, at my last review, that the only thing they had for me as a “developmental goal” was for me to “have more fun”.

I laughed out loud at that one; but at work, I guess it’s true. I can be – can be! – one of those people who responds to your question of “How was your weekend?” with “Lovely! Say, did you ever get that file I sent you?”

Don’t they know that I’m paid by the hour? Don’t they know I have Things To Do?

I need to be “fuzzier”. I need to “relax”.

HOW CAN I RELAX WHEN I’VE HAD TO RE-BOOT FOUR TIMES TODAY?!!

Breathe, dagnab it, Pearl, breathe! (And insert llama-like thoughts here.)

Hummmmmm.