I’ve been down in the dumps the last couple of days. I’m quite disappointed in the renovation project underway at The Hellhole. The hardwood floors look nothing like I imagined/hoped they would, the work didn’t go smoothly at all and it’s truly ugly. I hate it. This is all the more disheartening because it’s something to which I’d looked forward for such a long time. I was all for returning the uncut boards for a refund and trying to figure out a “Plan B”, but Alan still feels it’s the best solution for my allergies/breathing problems, so meh.

Work’s not going that great, either. Yesterday I got to eat three or four spoons of soup before I gave up, eventually throwing my cold, congealed lunch away - why does no one ever need anything until I try to eat or wee? Why?!? It involves one of Nancy’s favorite recurring characters, though, so here:

1:28 PM - Phonin' Maniac calls. I see this on Caller ID and let it go to voice mail because I was eating lunch. [I’m supposed to get an hour for lunch, but my lunch break, like certain precepts of quantum physics, exists only theoretically, like my vacation days. Normally I'd have answered the call anyway but I was eating Progresso soup, which comes in little individual serving cups that read “Do not reuse or reheat bowl!” and since cold lentils are teh nasty, I let it go and planned to call her when I finished eating.]

1:35 PM - The Boss calls. He has a (I am not making this up) UGA football ticket emergency and I am to get on the phone with the ticket office AT ONCE about his SEC Championship tickets.

1:38 PM - I'm on the phone with UGA. Phonin' Maniac calls again. Leaves message.

1:40 PM - The Boss calls me. I don't answer because I'm still on the phone listening to the 'hold' recording at UGA which is only going to take a moment since The Boss is the only person in the southeast who has any interest in UGA football (that was extreme sarcasm, in case you didn't recognize it). When his call goes straight to voice mail, he starts sending me e-mail that Phonin' Maniac has called whining that I won't call her back and I need to call her ASAP. I'm supposed to deal with the ticket thing ASAP too, which presents a problem as I've only the one head and mouth. Two ears, though, so obviously I'm slacking.

1:48 PM - I give up and pitch my lunch into the trash. I call Bell South to pick up my messages.

While I'm on the phone with Bell South listening to the 2 previous messages from Phonin' Maniac, she calls AGAIN, so between the time I called Bell South and Computerized Lady told me I had 2 messages, she leaves another one and I hear 3 in the same call session. There's no real punch line to this except that it wasn't any sort of emergency, she just wanted to know if one of her clients had paid for this month yet.

Last night I had this vivid dream of eating dinner with Nancy, her mom and Anthony. We were in her mom’s basement apartment and the dinner was baked chicken in this delicious, savory gravy, with rice and broccoli on the side. They had Anthony dressed in a pink bunny outfit with long ears and a puffy cotton tail. He was throwing a very intense tantrum. I’m not sure if it was because he was dressed in a pink bunny outfit or because the dinner wasn’t his favorite dish (which is CRACKAH!) but he was righteously miffed. I was holding him when the tantrum started, which involved lots of body-flinging, so I was trying to grab and keep hold of him, hoping not to incur Nancy’s wrath by dropping and damaging her son. This may be because the last time I saw Anthony in real life I whopped him in the face with a bouncy ball. Don’t look at me like that, it was an accident. I was afraid I’d wounded him but he wasn’t even upset - he thought getting whopped in the face with a bouncy ball was The. Greatest. Thing. Ever. and kept doing it to himself over and over. There’s no real punch line to this part of today’s post, either, except that Anthony beats Ralphie hands down in the pink-bunny-outfit modeling competition.