Do you ever have those days where you just know the universe is sentient and it is out to get you? The days where nothing seems to go right, from the moment you wake to the moment you crawl, defeated, back into bed, there is just no getting away from it. The planets have aligned, the Fates are angered at you and a past life is coming back to haunt you, you stepped on a crack in the sidewalk…well it had to be something, didn’t it?
Take for example, my day today. It started with my oversleeping for no apparent reason and getting out of bed only to step on a juicy hairball left, with love I’m sure, by one of our many cats. At that moment I had a sudden, sinking feeling that today was not going to be my best day ever. After searching out my toothbrush which one of the aforementioned cats had graciously left in the spare room for me, I came downstairs wanting only my first oh so divine cup of coffee. I puttered about with one eye open, cleaning out the coffee maker, opened the freezer and found a near empty bag of coffee. My husband, allergic to all forms of cleaning, left it there rather than throw it out and tell me we needed more. I was not to have my lovely first cup and instead had to get dressed and walk to the corner store for more.
Opening the door I was met by a wall of heat, ironic as yesterday it was near freezing. I returned dripping in sweat from my short walk, started my coffee, sat down at my computer and then shot a dirty look at my husband who decided that was the time to tell me he wanted lunch. He, of course, was sprawled on the couch playing his latest favorite video game it being his day off and a day off tends to result in the temporary inability to use his legs. After he begged sweetly, I grumbled my way back in to the kitchen, only because it allowed me to sniff my brewing coffee like a crack addict while I waited for it to finish.
The next few hours were the only decent hours of the day, piddling about on my computer, gaming, modding, tweeting and generally being lazy until I had to leave for work. Blissful in comparison! I arrived at the pizza shop where I waitress, cook, prep and generally do a bit of everything, at the same time as my co-workers. To my dismay, I saw the usual woman who works the kitchen with me was not there. In her place an old employee who hadn’t worked in years. Once she was very good but the years away dulled her skills but that would tell later. I waited for our boss to open the door, looking forward to getting out of the heat only to hear her curse loudly. The Air Conditioning had died sometime during the night. A pizza shop is not somewhere you want to be on a ninety degree day without air conditioning. The cursing was only getting started. We went about setting the shop up for the night, our busiest as Friday’s always are. I turned on my ovens. We have two stacked atop each other, only the top one works properly. The bottom oven refuses to heat properly no matter how high you set the temperature. A few minutes later I cracked the top oven door to check if it had been cleaned and wasn’t met by the customary blast of heat in the face. Yes, the oven had died.
Our busiest night of the week when two ovens are barely enough to keep up and we were now relegated to using only the bottom where everything takes twice as long to cook. The phones began ringing and we were off. As the orders began to pile up so too did our dining room begin to fill. We were so busy my boss kept me up front, no tables for me tonight, leaving them to our old employee. While she waited tables, I ran the oven and the kitchen at the same time. She had forgotten how to do almost everything and seemed incapable of even staying atop her dishes. As fast as I could wash them she would add more and for some reason, seemed to loathe putting away those I’d cleaned. Instead, she puttered about, frequently vanishing to ‘have a puff’ and reappearing to thank me quickly for doing her dishes, making her food and in general being her kitchen girl all night. As our business finally wound down late in the evening, exhausted, I went to put a pizza in. Bending over and practically kneeling to get into the bottom oven, I tipped the pie on the oven door, dumping it and most of its toppings onto the door and the floor below. It was a frantic race to scrape the bubbling cheese off the door before it could solidify and send out a stink that would never dissipate. Adding insult to injury, as I was sweeping up the floor beneath the oven, the head of the broom fell off. No reason, it just decided it was unhappy as a broom and decided to become a hand brush instead.
So ended my night and now I sit sipping something that’s both wine and beer and sparkling, cheap but well-earned and pondering why the universe sometimes decides I need a little reminder that I am not in charge and my world can be upended at any time, no warnings necessary, for any reason or no reason and I may never know which. The lesson, I suppose, is you can’t control when your day is going to go to crap. You can only deal with the aftermath and hope tomorrow will be better…and perhaps indulge in an adult beverage or three while you’re at it.
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