As usual this morning I slept until 930, spent a half hour staring off into space while sipping tea, and then started to think about actually maybe working around mid-morning, with a slow and gentle easing-in to actually checking my email, for starters. This is my daily ritual and the whole process typically takes at least a few hours. This is why I don’t ever calendar in anything productive before noon. (Note to my two friends who are constantly and relentlessly trying to get me to go on morning hikes with them; you know who you are.)
This particular morning, just as I was about to dive in to maybe kind of doing something soon, I got a Skype-chat message from my friend Don. (FYI there is no end to the myriad and creative ways you can get in touch with me in writing. The phone? Not so much.)
Don had a cold (possibly the same TB-like bug I suffered from last week) and wanted to know if I would take his symphony tickets for tonight off his hands. Oh yes! I am not one to not jump on free symphony tickets. I love classical music and love an excuse to wear The Bunny even more. The Bunny is a white rabbit-fur vest I was given by someone, at some point, that is incredibly NOT P.C. but super soft and yummy and kind of awesome. In a terrible way. Note: I do not condone wearing fur. But I do wear The Bunny on occasion. Just one of the many ways I contain multitudes, y’all.
The one catch? I had to drive up and over the hill to Muir Beach to pick up the symphony tickets at Don’s house.
A normal person could probably zip out and take care of this tiny little errand and be back at work shortly and then pat themselves on the back for having such an awesome laidback freelancing lifestyle that they can do spontaneous things in the middle of the day. Not me.
Muir beach is about a 10-minute scenic drive up Highway One that proceeded to take me about 2 1/2 hours. I went by way of The Whole so that I could grab some soup for Don, and I happened to run into my good friend Michelle who I hadn’t seen in ages. We sat on a bench and filled each other in for a while. It was great to see her.
When I left The Whole I started to drive up the mountain, but soon enough I nearly hit two dogs running around maniacally in the road. I pulled over, got honked at a bunch (California drivers are unerringly righteous), and finally succeeded in steering these two clueless, spastic, and super smelly terriers back to their rightful owners, who were all, “What? We didn’t even notice they got out!” (Sidenote, not a dog person, and always think it’s weird when people “don’t notice” that their huge, pungent, loud, obnoxious dogs are not in the yard. It makes me vaguely suspicious that they are secretly “forgetting” to secure the gate so the dogs will “accidentally” run away.)
After that, I followed a tourist up and over the hill at an excruciatingly slow crawl until I finally got to Don’s. Tickets in hand, I decided to take the more direct route back to my house, forgetting that there is construction going on in a feeble and ongoing attempt prevent the entire highway from sliding down into Green Gulch Zen Center. I stared at this for about 20 minutes:
I got back to my house around 12:30. Still plenty of time to salvage my workday.
I didn’t need to leave for the symphony until 5:30. Five hours.
Problem is, I had to start my whole “settling in” routine all over again. As the minutes ticked by and I found myself once again starting into space, dicking around on email, making myself another pot of tea, making myself lunch, letting my neurotic cat Luka in and out every 3.5 seconds, and responding like Pavlov’s dog to every single text message (and oh yes, writing this blog post), I began to get increasingly panicky about getting anything done today.
1:30. Blood pressure starting to really rise. Still not working.
2:30. Getting highly panicky. Have at least 4 hours of mandatory client work to finish today. Start obsessing over reorganizing my calendar to fit it into my weekend instead.
3:00. So completely panicky at this point that I’m nibbling on a xanax to calm down.
3:30. Tired. Really tired. Maybe a little too much nibbling.
4:00. Angry nap.
5:00. I have to leave in a half hour.
5:30. Let’s just write that one off as a “personal day”?
This, kids, is why I work evenings and weekends.
I hate to rub it in, but I just got an hour and a half of work done.