random thoughts – Day 1,274 – (Tuesday) – sh*t show

Some days move along like a carefully choreographed dance production with one segment moving to the next, and multiple participants flowing across the stage and in and out of the wings and it’s lovely. Today’s production was more like a car wreck than a dance piece. Right from the start, the day was a bit of a sh*t show.

I woke up with a knee that felt puffy and tender, and was sore into the lower leg. The physical therapist looked disappointed when I told her that my leg hurt after the last session as I walked to the car from the office and this morning it was just a different flavor of not great. I forgot to also tell her there was sciatic pain over the weekend. Later, during the side steps exercise with a rubber band, my knee felt crunchy and sore, a new and depressing setback. I swear I wasn’t trying to make the therapist cry.

Poor, dried up plant.

After Physical Torture it was home for a remote work day. Once at the desk I saw that the once beautiful pink mini rose my sister gave me barely a month ago had become a crispy, dried relic. The care label said to "keep moist," and that works great when I’m home working at the desk three days a week and home on the weekend, but last week the work schedule was changed up and I went into the office Wednesday through Friday, and then I took off out of town Sunday and Monday. I hadn’t been at the desk to notice the plant since Tuesday, it showed and I felt bad. I hope it can be resurrected. 

Ninety-six emails awaited my attention, including several notices for required training modules. When I checked out one of the trainings, it was disappointing to see it was a video format, my least favorite training format. Videos might work well for some people, but I don’t absorb information presented by a talking head droning on and on about legal stuff while different words are shown on the screen. Am I supposed to be reading the screen, or listening to the presenter? I can’t do both, and there is a test at the end. It was so frustrating, I bailed, and now I get to look forward to dealing with it again between now and the due date which isn’t very far off.

Shattered.

Before work, there was an idea to change an art piece in the bathroom. One piece was removed and set on the kitchen counter, another piece moved into the now empty spot and a shadowbox piece done when I lived in Tennessee was chosen to fill the newest vacant spot.

The newly placed piece looked great and I was happy with it. A few hours later, it fell off the wall and landed face down on the tile floor with a crash. The corner of the frame broke on impact and the glass smashed all over the floor. Four of the eight photos inside were gouged. Tiny glass shards were spotted several feet away, including in the kitchen. 

During the day, confusion and annoyance continued to reign. 

One project suffered from a lack of useful communication / information. Info was requested and responses were incomplete. Excuse me magazine ad salesperson, but when the question is “what is the size for the new ad,” an answer of “X inches by Y inches” is more helpful than “the same as the ad for a totally different publication,” which, I will note, someone else worked on and communicated with the ad person. Thanks for all your non-help. I’ll drop everything and go dig up those dimensions myself. The ad is for a “best of” edition, and big surprise, instead of covering "the best of" one town like it has forever, it suddenly covers two towns. Thanks for not pointing that out, not helpful ad person. It was super fun asking the designer to redo the ad once we finally had all the random info tidbits. Or do we have it all? Maybe not. It turned out the same type of annoying day was taking place over at the designer's desk.

Ugh.

Thankfully, the annoying work day finally ended. There was a small break before a board meeting via Zoom, and when logging in for the meeting ten minutes in advance, there was a notice there was no Internet. Of course not. The router was glared at. The troubleshooting feature on the app was consulted and it informed that my internet was offline due to an outage being fixed in the area and “should be resolved by 6:50 pm.” Riiiiiiiight.

At 7:00, the board meeting ended, the Internet was still out, and I learned that no Internet also means no TV. An Outage Map amended the resolution to “as soon as possible.” Maybe they gave up after blowing past the first benchmarked time.

While trying to talk myself and my tight lower leg into attending the gym, at 7:37 Internet, TV, and calm were restored at The BungaLowell. Whew. It was the foot stool, TV, social media, and Duolingo lessons for the win.