A Little Something I wanted to post yesterday

[melwil]

Melina Wilson and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day . . .

Bad days never start on the actual day. Bad nights start the night before. Bad days begin at 10pm when your sinus pain goes from tolerable to agonising. Bad days begin when you're lying in bed, unable to sleep at 10pm - and you have to be awake at 4 in the morning.

Bad days continue at 4 in the morning, after about 4 and a half hours sleep (the heavy dosage of painkillers finally kicking in), when every drop of alcohol consumed the night before seems to be pounding around your head. (At four in the morning, pain is somewhat remote.) You can't get the rogue tangle out of your hair, you can't get your hair into any resemblance of a 'neat, servicable hairstyle that will fit under hair net and baseball cap', and your uniform pants are still long enough to belong to a giraffe.

At 4.30 am, you are in the kitchen - making some resemblance of breakfast (anything that will prevent you from keeling over into the doughnuts.) Your coffee is too hot, your milk seems unusually empty and you can't cut your english muffins thin enough to fit into the toast (let alone have butter soft enough to butter them).

At 4.55am you are out the front door - convinced that the day is about as bad as it's going to get. (Because nothing bad happens after 5am - right?)

At 5am you get to the bus stop and realise that someone has shattered the middle window of the shelter. All over the seat. You are leaning against the sign that tells you (incorrectly) when the bus will arrive, when you realise that you left your very yummy, home made lunch on the kitchen counter (surrounded by crumbs -stupid english muffin - but we'll get back to the crumbs later.)

The bus driver is grumpy and determined to hit every pot hole - and you have writing ideas, but are unable to get your hand to reach the paper due to the bouncing bus. You get off the bus at 5.25am in a great humph. To top it off - your throat and stomach begin to hurt.

At 5.30am you meet your boss heading to work and walk along with her. You quickly realise that she won't be at work for very long, and indeed, she expects you to run the shift - although you are not a trained shift leader and Fridays are HELL Days.

You break your favourite pair of cheap earrings (the pretty green ones - you know - green for Harry's eyes, or Slytherin). You lose all sense of time, purpose and sanity.

You realise that there is a LOT of doughnuts to ice and fill (but the registers are working today, and the coffee machine isn't flooding - so things have to get better).

You realise you have apple-rasberry jam in your hair.

Boss leaves - threatening not to come back - saying that she's done everything for the day and all I have to do is supervise the workers.

She calls back - asking you to fill in and sign a forgotten form.

The Armaguard man comes - you don't have access to the safe.

You run out of change - you don't have access to the safe.

People are grumpy and ask for refunds. You smile and oblige - wondering when you'll ever get the doughnuts finished.

Someone asks for 12 bagels - all with cream cheese.

You hate doughnuts.

The warehouse rings wanting to know where your order is. You plead ignorance and run around madly, trying to figure out what Boss should have ordered.

You stare at Boss's note to staff, trying to work out spelling.

The staff whinge at you. You realise that you're going to have to stay into your own time to finish cleaning - or start early the next day.

You finally finish both doughnuts and cleaning and write yourself a note reminding yourself to check into a mental institution the next time you turn up for work.

You just make the overpacked bus and are stuck sitting next to a smelly, overgrown teenager.

You miss Matt.

You get home, hoping to put your feet up and enjoy a lovely long letter from Matt, when . . .

. . . you find a note on the table. A note from your homophobic, racist, dim witted, anal retentive, bottle blond house mate. She's pissed at you because you forgot to wipe up the crumbs on the kitchen bench. ( “It's disgusting, I almost vomited! It was is such a state you filthy rodent . . .”). The anger over the crumbs turns into a diatribe about cleaning. ( “Why didn't you vaccum yesterday on your day off?” - [wow, work is a funny place to spend a day off ], “What happened to the cleaning thing - it lasted a week?” [What, I'm the only person who has to clean around here?] “We manage to keep the place clean” [Funny - pile of shoes near the front door, a variety of crap and other detriment on the dining room table, couch covers and cushions and for some (God only knows what) reason, a tea towel on the floor] and “Please put your dishes away in the dishwasher in future, it's disgusting to leave them out” [There are three glasses on the draining board. One of them is mine. It is rinsed and ready to be used again, so we don't have to clean up a trillion cups . . .])

You snarl and wipe the kitchen benches, the microwave, the fridge and the oven. You put the toaster and the kettle into the cupboard, where they rest for a few hours before being propped up on the counter again. You vaccum the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, the upstairs corridors, you organise your shoes in the cupboard and tidy the bathroom for effect. You try not to remember that you (with the help of your friends) cleaned the entire house TWICE less than two weeks earlier. You write an apology (not as witty, sarcastic or idealistic as you would like - she can't understand long words . . . or history . . . or social comment . . . or maths, science, geography or the english language without swear words)

You storm upstairs, fall into your bed and cry.

What a terrible, horrible no-good, very bad day!

Then you read a great letter from Matt, eat your fantastic lunch (albeit a few hours late) put on some music - and amazingly, begin to feel better.

Comments

My sympathy and support

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Melina.. I know you probably have better people to bitch and whinge to, but you have my sympathy and if you want to bitch at me, feel free to give me a call or write me an email. I know what it's like to have days like that.. except I rarely have a nice letter and belated lunch to give it a nice end.. Hope you're feeling less homicidal...

-Dave-

[quantesque.livejournal.com]

Oh Melina, you poor thing...we *are* having coffee today, not Saturday, so I'll make Liz call you to get your ass out with us! Both you and Cara need a sympathetic shoulder, I think :)

Don't worry though - it only gets better, as the cliche goes.