A Day in the Life of Matilda OR Um, you've got a thing there...

This is a little story about a friend of mine.  Let's call her Matilda.  Yea, Matilda.  That's her name.

Now Matilda has a full life.  Lately, maybe it's a little too full.  She working full time, she's got a little freelance gig on the side filling in some extra hours, and she's rarely seen sitting down, what with all the kids running around, and that shoe she lives in to keep clean.  How does a busy mom, do it?

Anyway, she's somehow figured out how to keep it all together.  So she wakes up one morning during this crazy week, and checks her calendar.  A meeting at a client's office, followed by two phone interviews and a face-to-face (she's looking to hire some help at the full time job).  She's also volunteered to head up an auction at one child's school and needs to make some related calls, work on a client project, and finish up a company blog post.

A busy day.  But first...what to wear?  Matilda feels good when she looks good - don't we all?  So she goes through the morning routine and chooses a great outfit.  Great skirt, white tailored blouse, tall boots and tops it off with a great new shawl she bought a few weeks ago but hasn't worn yet.

But I digress.  Matilda gets all those kids out the shoe and to their respective schools, and heads to the client's office.  Arrives five minutes early (great start!) and hops out of her car, grabs her briefcase and struts, heels clicking importantly, towards the front door.  She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirrored walls of the building and smiles (not bad!), before throwing the door wide and heading inside.  She's greeted warmly by the receptionist and notices two gentlemen in the lobby, who glance her way.  One of them does a double take, his eyes lingering.  Matilda ignores this, of course, signs in at the front desk and turns to take a seat.
"Excuse me," the man with the eyes says to her.
She stops and turns, smiling.
He gestures with his right hand behind his neck, "you've got a, ah, a thing..." he trails off.
A thing?
"Oh?" she says, unsure.
"Um, a price tag," he explains, tapping his neck again, "um, it's hanging out."

Now, Matilda's self-importance comes to a screeching halt as she reaches behind her neck and feels the tag, with the sale sticker, hanging proudly in full view.
The receptionist smiles and offers scissors.

As it turns out, these two gentlemen are there for the same meeting.  Matilda can't quite remember what she said to them once the tag was removed, but it was, of course, very clever.

As it turns out, this was one of the best moments of this very busy, sometimes difficult, oftentimes stressful week.  For Matilda, that is.

Ever had a moment like Matilda's?  Go ahead...share it, it'll make me, um, I mean her, feel better.

Do you hear that racket?

There is as cacophony in my head. Drums pounding to the rhythm of my heart, stress pumping through my veins to the beat of the blinking cursor on my blank page. With each thuh-thump, a new series of words courses: tuition payments, gas prices, career success, summer schedules, editors' deadlines, essay topics, tweets, blog posts...the list goes on and on. I am feeling a sense of overload. How can I feel so...busy...when it seems as though nothing's getting done?

I was driving between my office and the park for boot camp yesterday when suddenly the racket got so loud it distracted me from my own thoughts. What the...? Then a fat, brown, winged bug hit my windshield and bounced off. Half a dozen more were zooming past the row of traffic ahead of me.

Then I realized that buzzing cadence in my head had gone external - the cicadas in the county are louder than my own humming stress.

I was cutting the lawn last weekend when I felt a hundred pairs of eyes on me. Bug eyes. They were all over my cedar fence. I don't know if they are always this brown color, or if they camouflage themselves, but I couldn't see them at all until I was pushing the lawn mower right up against the fence. It was like a cheap horror flick!

But I digress, at least those damn bugs'll be gone in another two weeks. Then I'll be left with the pulsing rhythm of my own deadlines. And maybe that's a good thing. It drives me to get things done, and to sit up and take notice when things aren't getting accomplished.

Time to focus on finishing up those three essays in my "WIP" (work in progress) folder...

This week has not gotten off to the best start. Monday morning, we had a client coming into the office, so naturally, we were all looking our professional best and the office was sparkling clean. I thought it would be nice to start a pot of coffee, so with high spirits I grabbed a filter from the cabinet, counted out 12 scoops of coffee grounds, slid the filter into the coffee maker, turned on the burner, pressed the start button and walked back to my office, heels clicking, to check my emails and start my work day.

Five minutes later, a heard a cry of surprise, followed by a groan. I jumped out of my seat, and before I even made it down the hallway, I realized what I'd done. "Oh my God! I forgot the coffee pot!" Hot coffee was everywhere. Dripping down the sides of the wire shelving, running down the sides of the microwave, and pooled all over the kitchen floor. Three of us tiptoed around the mess, wiping and mopping, trying not to ruin our clothing, and make the kitchen presentable for the client who was on his way.

"Boy, when you do it, you do it all the way, huh?" a coworker joked. Apparently so.

I'm grateful for the Tide Pen that magically erased the coffee stains on the shoulder of my boss's dress shirt.

Tuesday I overslept, got to work with one minute to spare, and waited patiently for someone else to make the coffee.

Here's hoping Wednesday is disaster free!