Sometimes as you are waking up you have this feeling that you should just call in sick and stay in bed. I'm not talking about the way you feel every day when you are forced to crawl out from under the warm blankets and blinking step into the sun. No. I am talking about those rare occasions when there is an ominous sense of foreboding in the air, and you just know that your karmic number has come up. The world has chosen you to get covered by all the shit hitting the fan.
I should have listened to my gut instinct, curled up. and gone back to sleep. Even my cat knew that I should stay in bed. She came to cuddle with me beneath the blankets. She never does that.
Ignoring my intuition, I got out of bed and got dressed. I wore a new lavender top that I had only ever worn once. This is where the Universe decided to send me my first hint of impending disaster. For some unknown reason, my nose started bleeding. Gushing. Blood was everywhere. All over my new top.
By the time I cleaned myself up and changed clothes, I was running late. I scrambled to grab breakfast and my keys so I could eat in the car. Now, here was another hint. I should never eat in the car. I'm a klutz at the best of times. Add trying to drive through morning rush hour traffic, a driving sense of panic and impending doom, and a bagel and it is a recipe for disaster. Especially considering my luck and the fact that I had already demolished one shirt this morning.
I slid into the front seat and tried to turn the key in the ignition. It wouldn't move. It was locked. Panic set in, and my logical brain dissolved into a weeping pile of mush as I tried to accept that I was doomed. I would never drive my car again. How would I get it fixed? I couldn't drive it to the mechanic! Would they come to me? Surely not! The stupidity of my panic-stricken brain is embarrassing.
Now, had I been able to put two thoughts together, I would have remembered our old van. The Wookie-Wasp. So named because it made a disturbing sound like a Wookie, Transformers had just come to the big screen and my sister and I desperately wanted our own Bumblebee, and I like alliteration.
This old van had often had a problem in which the wheel would lock and the engine would die after it had been started. The brakes wouldn't work, and you couldn't turn it off to restart it because the wheel would lock, so you would find yourself unable to stop as you backed helplessly down the driveway. You had to quickly put the car in park, jiggle to wheel until it was loose, and then the ignition would work.
Why didn't I jiggle the wheel of my car? Panic-brain was too panicked.
Instead, I threw my keys on the counter with the intention of calling my grandpa when I got to work so he could look at the car. I grabbed my mom's keys, hopped into her van, and took off.
I arrived at work in a triumph of self-congratulation. I was just barely on time. Feeling pretty good about myself, I walked toward the front door. And realized that my key to the building was on my keychain. The keychain with my car keys. The keychain that I had thrown on my counter for my grandpa. I was locked out. Furthermore, I was the one with the master key. I was supposed to open everything for everyone else.
This is when I gave up. I plopped myself onto a picnic table, dug a granola bar out of my purse, and waited for someone to rescue me. And this is also when the side door opened behind me, and my boss asked what I was doing. For once, she had come early to get some extra work done.
So that is how my Monday morning went. The rest of the horror was the usual computers failing, not being able to get through to the system helpline, and being buried under fifteen billion things that need to get done. Thank god there was beer in the fridge when I got home.
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