A post in which I reflect on What. A. Day!

I wandered into work today with no idea of what was in store.  Truly.

When I got to the office, I found that lightning had struck the air-conditioning unit in our portion of the building.  The expected high today was almost 90 degrees.  Not as bad as it had been, but still pretty blame hot to be sitting in a room full of computers in office drag.  But there was stuff to do, so I got to work.

Then next bulletin was that there were monsoon rains and flooding in Manila.  Our office in Manila is where most of our back-up staff works. Or worked.  Most of the staff had been unable to come in today because the city is about 60% underwater.  After cursing for a few moments, I got to work. 

flood victims in Manila, who have much more important and real problems than this spoiled white boy

I pulled and started preparing weekly reports.  One of the main reasons we have back-up staff is that my boss began demanding increasingly ridiculous amounts of weekly reports to track every single individual item on our aging - this despite the fiscal health and robust sales our company (thankfully) enjoys.  The reports have reached the level now that we have three full-time employees who do nothing but produce largely unnecessary, painfully detailed reports.  I hadn't prepared weeklies in a couple of months, and it wasn't long before the labyrinthine details and numerous custom alterations necessary had me feeling confused, overwhelmed, and irritated.  Making it worse was the fact that I felt like a spoiled American for even feeling pissed, because the folks in Manila might well be loading their screaming children onto a makeshift raft at that very moment.  Really no inconvenience I was suffering would compare.  I did finally get things broken down and distributed for comments (each manager has to make detailed comments on key accounts in their area), after which I left for lunch.

During lunch, Rhonda got in touch (thankfully) to remind me that it was Tony's birthday.  I sent him a text, and let Russ and Billy know the deal. 

I was reminded that today was Dad's second hip replacement, which I had completely forgotten.  Eve sent me several thousand text messages today about the coordination of dinner.  I don't mind taking supper over to them at the hospital, but my nerves were just frayed. 

Jason got in touch to say that while he was driving down today, he wouldn't be coming to my place.  Since I usually have dinner with my parents on Tuesday night, he just made arrangements to stay with his dad.  That was fine.  I didn't expect that I would be fit company tonight anyway.  At least that was one less thing to worry about coordinating.

When I returned, my phone was ringing off the hook with people telling me what I had done wrong this morning.  I fixed it all, and had about an hour this afternoon to work on my own work before I had to leave to go get supper. 

I ran by Fried Green Tomatoes and took dinner over to the hospital.  The staff was very friendly, and a woman opened the door for me as I left.  I could have kissed her. 

When I got to the hospital, I talked some about the day, but I knew I really couldn't hold a candle in the 'geez I've had an awful day' sweepstakes today.  Dad had his hip cut out of his body, and the Manila office was underwater.  Compared to that, my problems seemed petty, and complaining about them seemed irrelevant.  Not that I didn't give it the ole college try.

Dad was in pretty good shape, considering.  He was hurting, but they brought his pain meds while I was there, and he started to feel better.  The internist was there, and she talked to us for a while.  She was nice. 

After she left, unfortunately, things went south a bit.  Dad began to fret over things.  He wanted to talk about another situation with Lisa and Cole.  I tried to make him feel better, but he didn't seem to really want to feel better.  He just wanted someone to listen to him fret.  He gets this from my grandmother.  He fusses and worries over things like a rosary, repeating them over and over.  He is usually a little easier to get calmed down, but because of the drugs he was a bit more on-and-on tonight. 

But because of the same drugs, it wasn't too long before he just wanted to sleep.  Eve had apparently had a belly-full today.  We said goodnight and left.  I took the left-over biscuits, and stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home for some veggie sausage.  I don't need it, but theirs is really good, and I was thinking about sausage biscuits for brekkie...

I actually got home much earlier than I thought I would.  After the day I had, I was very grateful to have a little time to wind down.  I turned on Master Chef and watched that.  Gordon Ramsey is kind of a tool, but I enjoy this show and catch it when I can. 

It was nice to have a bit of down-time to kind of coast out of this beastly day.