Just when you think you've everything under control, or in my case when you've just got everything semi where you can see it, if you lean real far and squint, life takes your best laid plans and concepts and goes "I wonder what would happen if I did this?" and then stands back to watch the fun. It's as though someone up there doesn't have enough to do already.
I took Wednesday off from work to catch up on the homework I was supposed to have done Sunday when I was out doing good deeds. I have a month of off time that I haven't used yet - and that doesn't roll over - so I figured what is one day in the grand scheme of getting where you want to be. Since I've been there I've given the company back roughly 13 weeks of vacay time, and we won't even go into the bonus money they were nice enough to let me know they were supposed to pay me...right before they changed the program and didn't make it retroactive.
But as actual events unfolded, Wednesday was when I figured out why people take such great pains to make the bathroom of their homes, especially the master bath, more than just a utility room. I now understand the moldings, plants, the artwork, the layout consideration, the occasional view and the whole idea of making it into a space of light where one can find oneself against the back drop of a cold cruel world.
Guess why.
I'd been a little queasy Tuesday night, but I shrugged it off. I'm a guy...you shrug things off. If it persisted I was going to go back to my Grandmother's tried and true flour, warm water and salt recipe to quiet it down. But when I drifted off I thought I was fine.
At 4:30am I found out I wasn't.
At 6:00am I still wasn't.
You can go in varying 15 and 30 minute intervals from here.
I tried to do a little reading for class but couldn't concentrate. I leafed through some magazines and looked at the pretty pictures. I considered painting the bathroom walls a ocean blue. I lay on the bed for while guessing the worst was over...but I was wrong. I drank the Milk of Magnesia. I leafed through the pictures in another magazine. I considered painting the walls of the bathroom a Terra cotta orange. More of the Milk of Mag. I realized I needed some new magazines.
I think I lost between five and ten pounds in 8 hours.
My original plan had been to rise early, make a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns, and get started with the homework. The research assignment was to be done by noon. If I finished early I was even going to see if I could get my haircut. Run by the bank and grocery store, back by one thirty. Read up on the other assignment, brief a case or two. Get to campus around five ready to go, not rushed. Bright eyed and bushy tailed is how they used to say it.
The...er...exodus stopped around 1pm. Let's do the math and see just how far off schedule I was?
Way far.
So I battled through the assignment I knew was due first. The one I had started last week but had let slide because I didn't think the questions were that hard. I am so brilliant! And then I started on the assignment I knew was also due the same night, but second. The one I had actually taken the day off to do but had been preempted, yeah that one. The one a classmate said had taken him an hour to do the first 10 of 30 questions. An hour doing the easy ones before the essay answers....
So I bared my teeth, winked at the crowd and dove in headlong.
And for those who wonder, in the little impromptu competition in class, my answers for the team were correct. I even got a small pack of M&M's a prize, thank you very much.
But I start on next week's homework tonight. Know this.
Barkeep. One of them Pepto Bismol martinis
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