How to have a crappy day: a primer

1. Have cat knock alarm clock off bedside table so that battery dislodges, alarm doesn't go off, and you wake up late.
2. Since you are going to be late for work anyway, take the opportunity to drop off cheques for July and August parking (even though it's half-past July, they haven't towed you yet) at the Polish Catholic church in whose lot you park
3. Sing this song loudly while waiting for the church receptionist to buzz you in.
4. Trip on your sandals while climbing the tile stairs up to the church office, dropping your purse and bruising your knee.
5. Try not to blush when the church lady, who has come running at the sound of your fall and is picking up objects which have been jettisoned from your purse, hands you a hairbrush and a business card from Fantasia that you got at a party in February.
6. Go into the office to give her the cheques and hear street noises, which leads you to notice that the closed-circuit TV coverage of the church door includes sound. Remember what you were singing loudly while waiting to be buzzed in. Wonder if the church lady will let such an obvious deviant such as yourself to continue to park on holy ground.
7. Walk to work from the church with sore knee.
8. Get to office and have just enough time to go through email before having to walk back to church (with sore knee) get in your car, and drive to the periodontist to have 'pocket-reduction surgery' on one quarter of your mouth.
9. Realize that nervousness about upcoming surgery has given you ummmm...stomach issues.
10. Drive wildly around periodontist's office parking lot looking for empty spot before pants accident occurs.
11. Find bathroom. Avert danger.
12. Wait in waiting room for 20 minutes.
13. Get shot up with enough novocaine, or lidocaine, or Michael Caine to immobilize a water buffalo.
14. Try to answer the bright and cheerful chatter of the hygenist with your frozen and seemingly swollen mouth and tongue.
15. Wonder if it's being filmed for youtube.
16. Try to relax and find your happy place* through meditation while listening to the periodontist and hygenist scrape, cut, suction, and suture your gums while discussing the quality of ribs served at Montana's Cookhouse vs. those served at Baton Rouge in Kanata Centrum.
17. Spend one hour (not exaggerated for effect) on the phone at the receptionist's desk with VISA because every time the receptionist tries to use your card to pay for it, the message "call for authorization" appears, and you get put on hold each time and then forgotten.
18. Find out that the problem is the magnetic stripe on your card (thus removing the unspoken belief you can see in the receptionist's eyes that you are over your credit limit) and that phone messages recorded on your home voicemail by VISA security staff have explained this, to which you reply that you AREN'T AT HOME, YOU ARE AT THE PERIODONTIST'S OFFICE AND THE FREEZING IS WEARING OFF AND YOU ARE IN A VERY BAD MOOD.
19. Finally pay using VISA once the receptionist enters the number rather than swiping the card.
20. Return to work, and after leaving a long, garbled, barely understandable message on the voicemail of a scientist in Halifax regarding Crown copyright, decide it's best for all concerned for you to go home and claim sick time for the rest of the day.
21. On the way home, stop to pick up some Listerine, which the perio has told you to use 4 times a day.
22. After you get through the checkout, you notice that the skies have opened and it's pouring rain. You are not wearing a jacket. Your umbrella is, you guessed it, in the car.
23. Wait for 5 minutes and then decide that the rain isn't going to stop anytime soon. You're headed home anyway, where you can change into dry clothes, so you might as well just suck it up and jog out to the car through the rain. With the sore knee.
    
24. Get soaked within the first 30 seconds. Realize you don't remember parking your car that far from the store. The flash flood in the parking lot creates puddles so deep that you are submerged to your ankles. You are wearing jeans. They are not flood pants. Your wet birkenstock-like sandal goes shooting off your wet foot and hydroplanes across the giant puddle. Twice.
    
25. Make it to the car, get in, swing the wet hair out of your face, put the car in reverse and the rain stops. Like someone turned off a switch.
    
26. Go home, take some more Advil, and sleep, you're going to need your strength for when the kids are done at daycare.

*more on the happy place meditation tomorrow