Wasted Days

Have you ever had one of "those" days?  You know when you just wake up cranky, and continue on to be crankier and crankier as the day wears on until nobody really wants to be around you and eventually you don't really want to be around yourself either?  Well, today could be my day.  What a crank I am.

It started this morning, probably because I decided to skip church so I could sleep in, when my phone rang at 6:00 a.m.  I decided to ignore it because I deliberately left it downstairs last night.  Who wants to run all the way downstairs that early in the morning on my day off anyhow?  Next, through the fog of my sleepy brain, I distantly heard a text message come in to my phone, followed by the distinct sound of Doug's phone ringing, also downstairs.  By this time alarms started ringing in my head that I was desparately needed at home. I began to mentally calculate what time it was on the other side of the world.  Dreading the worst, thinking some one was hurt, the dog got hit by a car, one of my horses was colicking, or that at the very least there was no power at home and all the pipes were freezing, I stumbled down the steps and rummaged around in the dark trying to locate one of our phones.  My worst fears were confirmed, yes, it was home calling.

An immediate return phone call determined that Emily was having power issues in the barn and she needed to talk to Doug.  That didn't bode well for me.  That meant that I had to wake him up and the coffee pot hadn't even started to perkolate.  Sigh.  So much for sleeping in.  Eventually he was able to help her begin to trouble shoot and I made my way back to bed.  There's just not much to be said for going back to bed to try to catch a few more hours of sleep, it's just not the same.  Two hours later, I still felt groggy and cranky.

So, I decided I should cheer myself up with a chilled KitKat bar.  Just one little smidgeon first thing in the morning, it's not like I'd eat the entire candy bar.  My first bite reminded me that one of my dental caps had loosened and dislodged.  Sigh.  I reminded myself that now I need to locate a dentist.  I hate going to the dentist, and I don't think it's going to be a better dental experience in Abu Dhabi.  I can't seem to find any denture grip goop to stick it back in place until I suck it up and make the call for a dental appointment.  Sigh.

Okay, I knew I could get past this.  I could still turn my day around, it doesn't have to be totally ruined.  I began to cook breakfast for Doug and myself.  After I seasoned and cooked the American potatoes I look over to see Doug with his paws in my cooking.  "Sorry," he says.  "I added some salt to the potatoes."  Salt was literally crusted all over the top of the taters!  Now, I was beginning to become a little bit agitated.  My tongue lashed out, with an immediate retort, something in the neighborhood of, "I already salted them, stay the hell out of my cooking!"  "I didn't see you salt them," he replied defensively.  "YOU WERE ON THE PHONE IN THE OTHER ROOM!  I WONDER WHY NOT?"  I replied calmly and cooly, yeah, that's the way I remember it coming out.  And then he has the audacity to say, "I said I was sorry."  Good grief.  This guy just doesn't get it, does he? 

We made it through breakfast, and Doug immediately made an exit out the door, busying himself with washing the car.  Our car sits right outside our front door. I could hear him cheerfully whistling while he worked.  I decided I needed to check my important social network site and finish some bill paying chores while sitting at my computer.  Earlier this morning, Doug had chosen to install himself in my office chair leaned back with his feet propped up on my desk while he carried on a lengthy phone conversation with his son while I was cooking the aforementioned salty potatoes. 

I sat at my desk, settled myself in, and commenced to mentally escape before completing my important "work."  It was in the midst of my stimulating game of Spider Solitaire that I discovered my laptop seemed to be hot.  This couldn't be, I thought, I have a cooling fan underneath, and that's when I discovered, no I didn't really have a cooling fan under my laptop, I had a non-functioning cooling fan underneath my computer.  It's not that old, and I haven't used it that much.  After disconnecting the fan and attempting to twirl the blades with a pencil point, I gave it up for lost.  Sigh.  More dhirhams to spend.  Dentist, fan....

I decided to check on my "flowers" in our "garden."  One of our flower bushes didn't look so hot.  It wasn't thriving like the others we planted.  I decided it should be transplanted to another spot.  The new spot I chose was hard.  Rock hard to dig into.  I scratched around ineffectively with our only garden tool, a hand trowel.  Not making much progress, I decided to drench the spot with water and maybe come back to it later.  Eventually, I made my way out to sit on the front step and watch Doug wash the car.  That's when I noticed two things. 

The first was the gigantice scrape across the front driver's side of our rental car.  Ouch.  More dhirhams to the rental agency.  Doug explained that one away just last night when I discovered it while we were out and about, some quip about a tight squeeze and backing up and scraping a curb.  Arggh.  And that's when I spied it.  My dish towel, one of my favorite dish towels, brought from home, to the UAE, the most absorbent cotton pastel yellow and blue striped dish towel in our bare bones kitchen, sitting on top of the recycling bin outside.  Doug chose that moment to say, "Hand me that drying rag will you?  I've been using it to dry down the car."   I had wondered why that dish towel had those great big brown smudges all over it the last time I washed it.  I snapped.  "That's not a drying rag, that's one of my favorite dish towels, it's the only one we have that dries well."  I scooped it up, held it safely against my chest, made my way into the kitchen and rummaged around the bottom drawer to find one of the non-absorbent kitchen towels and bestowed that upon Doug.  Ha!  That ought to fix him, I chuckled to myself.

At some point early this morning, Doug called from the utility room, "How do you run the dryer?"  "Not easily," I replied.  We have this washer/dryer combination machine.  You can wash 6 kg of laundry, but only dry 3 kg of laundry.  So, I had to patiently explain that whole concept to him.  At which point he pawed through the clothes he washed yesterday, still wet in the machine.  He separated out a few items and we deliberated together over which buttons might make the machine function as a dryer.  We decided we might have made the right choice and went on to other tasks.  The timer said it would take 3 hours and 30 minutes to dry.  Hmm.  It's his clothes, I thought, and smugly went on my way.

Eventually, I made my way back to my computer.  Doug started up the stairs.  At that time, I chose to roll my office chair backwards.  There was a resounding SNAP!  And I found myself deposited neatly on the floor.  Remember the aforementioned leaned back foot propping phone conversation that took place earlier this morning?  Doug quickly came to investigate and found me still sitting on the floor staring stupidly at one half of the rolling feet on my office chair.  Sigh.  "I think that may have started to happen when I was sitting in your chair this morning."  Doug says. 

I made my way to the couch with a very thick book.  Doug made his way to the currently closed pool with the broken filter.  Three hours and thirty minutes later, my dryer sang a little song to me and I went to check on Doug's clothes.  Wet, soaking wet.  Not cupboard dry.  I shut the utility room door and made my way to my blog.  Currently, I am sitting in my lawn chair at my warm laptop wondering if Doug will find his way home.