I’m going to write about this on the internet, since I didn’t get to complain about it to anybody today:
Despite all my best intentions, I’m a habitually tardy person. (Tardy as in not punctual, in case it means something else to the kids these days. But I probably qualify as that, too). I try to get to places on time, but then everything starts working against me, from insomnia to just plain cruel fate.
I had a meeting this morning for work, and I got about four hours of sleep last night. Which is why I was as stunned that I managed to get up in plenty of time to make it in. Sweet. It gave me an excuse to putter around in the morning for once, and still with time to spare. Hell, I could even sit back and have my Georgia boy’s breakfast in a real grown-up person’s glass instead of grabbing a can to swill down in the car.
I checked out the window, and a car was blocking my driveway. Hey, no problem! It’s kind of annoying how often it happens, but this would give me a few minutes before I had to get dressed and all that. I wouldn’t be early, but I wasn’t in danger of being late.
So then I sit back to leisurely check my e-mail, and I knock the glass off the desk. And I’ve got wood floors, so it doesn’t just break; it shatters. Actually, even “shatters” is under-selling it. You usually don’t see glass breaking like this unless it’s in slow motion and somebody is jumping through it firing two guns at once. It was epic.
For some reason, my first thought wasn’t “I better put some shoes on and clean this up,” but “I better clean this up before the cat steps on it.” I’m only mentioning that because I’m hoping my concern for my pet will somehow make me sound better when I explain the parade of idiocy that followed.
I jump up to get the vacuum cleaner — step right on a piece of glass. Hurts, but nothing too serious. I pick it out, think, “that was kind of dumb of me,” and then commence to picking up the bigger pieces.
And stepped on pieces two and three while I was doing that. That’s when I start to realize this was more serious than it looked — there was glass everywhere.
So I finally get the big stuff squared away, and take the long way around to the kitchen to get the vacuum — step on piece four. That’s the one that really hurt. It’s also the one I can’t explain — I’m going to have to commission a sophisticated computer simulation to figure out how a glass breaking can send a shard flying behind the direction of impact to end up behind a doorjamb and lie in wait for me to come walking on it.
I limp over to the kitchen and get the vacuum, then clean up all the visible pieces, and the surrounding area for good measure. I found pieces in my living room, a good 15 feet away from where the glass broke.
At no point in this process did it occur to me to put on my shoes.
Meanwhile, the cat’s waiting just outside the blast radius, looking at me like I’m an idiot. When I was putting the vacuum away, a bucket fell on my head, and then I stepped on a rake.
I get it all squared away, and I’m standing in my bedroom in my underwear, limping and bleeding, when I look at the clock and see that my meeting starts in two minutes.
Finally I was able to stop cussing and get ready for work, picked pieces of glass out of my backpack (12 feet away from ground zero), and was able to leave this cursed apartment. The person blocking my driveway had long since left, incidentally — I’m guessing the screaming coming from my apartment scared them away.
So that’s the kind of thing I mean when I say that the universe is conspiring to keep me late for things.