Day

On the day in question, our heroine decided to let herself sleep in until 7:46 instead of the usual 7:30. Which is probably what threw everything into a sad spin.

At approximately 7:49, our heroine learned from her mother that a truly amazing person had finally died after a long illness. Heroine was grateful to her mother for not mentioning the 7:00am irate voicemail that heroine had left mother yesterday involving mother's choice to buy six dog beds and other general irritations about being emotionally smothered by the woman who gave her birth (even if it was with no painkillers).

At approximately 8:25 our heroine made it out the door after walking the dogs, remembering there is nothing except condiments in her refrigerator and deciding to go for the ponytail. For the one hundredth day in a row.

At 8:47 our heroine purchased an enormous eclair at a bakery in her building that used to be called "Baked" but is now named something generic like "Lucy's Sweets." Our heroine would really like to know the backstory on that name change but suspects she already does. Anyway, it could be a touchy subject.

The enormous eclair then sat there being eaten in various stage for the next six hours in a small conference room where the thermostat is broken and left on 60 degrees at all times, and the cabinets are full of candy so people keep interrupting her to get some so she can't remember which document she was looking at. Our heroine has also learned that although the firm functions on an honor system very few people actually put money for their candy in the Happy Buddha designed for that purpose. She also suspects this is why the shades for that particular conference room are always closed since there is a very observant secretary who watches it.

At 3pm, our heroine needed a break.

She didn't take one.

This was the case from about 3-5pm.

At 5pm she decided she had done all that was humanly possible and decided to finally exchange sympathies with the family.

At 5:15pm she actually started to cry, which was a little confusing because heroines don't normally cry. But there is an exception for people she cared about dying. So she decided to go with it. Until it went on for ten minutes and then our heroine realized that she was effectively trapped in her office since she was afraid that everyone would think she was crying because she worked all weekend, and such show of frailty would not look good on her review.

And being trapped in her office, our heroine had only some subway napkins stuffed in a drawer. Unfortunately, such paper product is hardly the most gentle on heroines' fine noses, and so by the time (6:15) that she finally managed to brave it out of her office, she closely resembled Rudolph. Or with the bloodshot eyes, drunken Rudolph.

Despite this, heroine decided that she probably needed something to eat besides Twixes, and Reeses and Mints and other things she did not pay for whilst sorting mounds of paper in the conference room, and went to get a beef schwarma sandwich.

At which point, the Jewish matchmaking service called for the third time that day, making heroine wonder if it is possible to put a restraining order on a matchmaking service. And why the people running it think it's effective to leave a voicemail message that begins "I'm really trying to talk to you, but it doesn't seem like you want to talk to me," which is making her start to think that the matchmaking service might have hired a few of her ex-boyfriends.

Then, at approximately now, our heroine came home, walked, fed and kissed her dogs, and is heading toward a warm bath.

And remembering that everything's temporary. There will be better days in question.

And she's alright.