Thursday, April 21, 2011

My Incredibly Entertaining Morning

One of the most important things I have learned in the past several years is to find a source of entertaining in just about everything. I've also learned that it's important not to let the "bad" stuff get to you; and to find the laughter in life. Without these skills, our world turns into a bleak, dry, boring, and often depressing place. It is in the spirit of entertainment that I share the story of my morning with you.

Let me first set the background a bit for you. As you may or may not know, I'm a single mother raising a teenager daughter (who is graduating from high school this year -- yikes!). With that being said, my mornings are usually pretty dull, with the regular routine of getting up, taking Sami to to school and getting myself to the rapid station (the public transportation "train" we use here in the Cleveland, Ohio area). This morning, however, was different. Sami was not going to school and I thought I could get a jump on my work day by getting to the office early. In addition to my early start, I was driving into the office, versus taking the train; as a friend of mine was going to give me a bunch of free cat food - and as much of a crazy cat lady as I am, I didn't want to go home on the train with bags and bags of cat food.

So, the day starts off like just about every other day. The piano version of Fireflies starts playing from my cell phone, as as soon as the notes fill the morning air, one of my cats (Carley) decides that it's time to wake up and start walking all over me. This morning he didn't see the need to avoid walking on my face, so as I was yawning and stretching, I got a mouth full of kitty paw. Startled human (fumbling with the phone alarm), startled cat (screaming so that everyone knows I tried to eat his foot) ... Good Morning, Sunshine!

I stumble to the bathroom and start the shower, and gather my towels and robe. Step into the shower and close my eyes to get my hair wet. Shampoo, lather, rinse, repeat. As I'm rinsing out my hair, I open my eyes and realize there is a man-eating spider descending from the ceiling with every intent of landing directly on my face. OK, so it was probably not a man-eating spider; but it was an eight legged creature of death and it was out to get me (I don't like spiders, can you tell?). I do what nearly every brave, macho American would do -- I squeal like a school girl and attempt to run away. In my shower. With shampoo every where. So, naturally, I land oh-so-ungracefully on my rear in the shower. And what do you know? Killer the Ninja Spider is still after me. So, I brave the elements, shampoo burning the one eye I can actually see out of (we'll cover the other eye in another posting), stand up, and .... SMACK! I squish the spider between my hands with the two handed non-shoe death punch! This thing is actually large enough for me to feel dying between my hands, legs and body all squished between my palms.

I spend the next 3 minutes scrubbing my hands of Ninja Spider Goo ... and finally finish my shower. Dry the body, put on the robe, find the coffee. Perfect plan.

I have one of those life-saving automatic start coffee pots that allows me to wake up in the morning to a nice, hot, fresh pot of coffee (flavor today: coconut). Except when I get to the kitchen, there is no coffee. Instead of going into coffee panic, I think "I can do this. I can press the ON button and all will be well with the world." Press. Nothing. Press. Nothing. **panic** PRESS ... zip. Thinking I'm too young to have to bury a coffee pot, I try in a last ditch effort to unplug the machine and plug it back in (maybe an electric shock would work -- it worked on me more than once!). I know, I didn't think it was going to work, but I was desperate. BINGO -- for some bizarre reason this works, and I have coffee brewing.

While the coffee gets it's hot and steamy on, I decide to get dressed. I trip over the cat in the hallway (sorry, Buttons.. but why are you just laying there like that?) and make my way into the bedroom. After a couple moments of staring at the closet and quietly cursing the laundry fairy for once again neglecting her duties, I grab a pair of pants. Put them on... zip them u.... wow broken zipper. Pants off, new pair of pants on. Grab a shirt and toss that on, along with a pair of socks and my tennis shoes (I always wear tennies into and from work -- dress shoes are for the office only!).

So, back to the kitchen for some wonderful coconut sweet cream coffee. Make the coffee and promptly spill it all down the front of me -- shirt, pants, shoes, socks... all wonderfully covered in coffee. Aaaaaaand back to the bedroom we go for another pair of pants (that desperately need to be ironed - but shall stay wrinkled) and a short sleeved sweater. Into the bathroom to do something with the Medusa curls on my head. I look into the mirror and realize -- gotta change my bra because the neck line of the sweater I have on shows the bra straps. Bedroom - change.

Back to the bathroom for the hair thing. I grab my non-frizz, Bozo control hair stuff and press the pump. Empty, of course. Back up plan ... back up plan.... ah ha! Curl control, non-frizz mousse from 29,847 years ago ... shake shake -- dispense. At this point in the game instead of mousse it's more like yogurt but it'll do the trick.

One of my girlfriends at work wanted a copy of one of Sami's senior pictures, which I forgot about until this morning; so I go to the bookcase (where I last saw them) and poke around to find one. They seem to be in full invisible mode, cause they aren't anywhere to be found. Hold on a second.. is that them? I grab what I think it is the photo envelope I keep them in and ... pull just about every book and notebook off the shelf somehow. I stare at the now almost bare shelf and realize a Senior picture for a friend at work isn't all that important. Spend a few minutes fixing my books-on-the-floor issue and get my stuff together for work. Back to the kitchen to grab a coffee-to-go in my handy-dandy "you can put this thing full of coffee in your purse and it'll never spill a drop" travel mug and head out the door. In an effort to keep my bag on my shoulder, the coffee in my hand, and trying to lock the door I somehow manage to pour coffee UP the sleeve of my jacket, thus soaking my sweater sleeve. No, I'm not changing, people can just put up with the fact that I smell like mocha-coconut. I'll tell them it's a new body spray from the Island or something.

I stop at the bottom of the steps and do what I usually do when things are raining down on me. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and say 'OK, I'm starting this over". I smile and head to my car, confident that my 'bad morning' is trapped in my past behind a locked apartment door.

I get into the car, start her up, and listen to the music coming out of the radio. Oh irony, how you get the wrinkles out of my clothes. "It's a great daaaaaaaaaaay to be alive, you know the sun still shining when I close my eyes". I start singing along, blissfully ignorant to what the Fates have yet to show me today. I look down at my dashboard and BAM ... gas tank is near empty. There's no way I'm going to get downtown and back near home without going to the gas station. Sigh.. no big deal. I'm still running a little ahead of my normal schedule, so I figure I can stop at the ATM, then the gas station and still make it to work by 7.30. I take in the nice little sunrise that is starting up, and pull into the bank. Up to the ATM and guess what? Yeap, out of order. I giggle to myself, because at this point, really -- it's just amusing. So, I head off to another bank location, because I'd really rather not pay fees for using some other bank's ATM. Find myself at the second bank, pull up, and nearly loose my sanity. Don't worry, the ATM isn't out of order -- this one is missing entirely. Just a hole in the wall where an ATM should be! I give up on trying to find another branch of my bank and just hit the nearest ATM -- I'll suck up the charges, because who KNOWS what might happen if I try to push my luck any further.
I get my money (whew!) and my gas without incident. Good thing, because at this rate, it wouldn't have surprised me if I found myself on fire at the gas station, or being dragged behind a horse drawn carriage somehow. I snake my way through the neighborhood and find a parking spot at the rapid station. Trying to dodge cars pulling in and out of the parking spaces, I realize I'm suddenly ankle deep in water. That's a pretty large hole, good thing I fit right into it! I shake my leg off the best I can .. doing my worst impersonation of Jim Carey in Bruce Almighty (you know, the scene outside the office building where he steps in the super deep puddle?). Good thing I was a source of quality entertainment for the gentleman walking up to the rapid station. He smiled at me, and I just laughed and said "It's not even Monday!"

I got up to the ticket machines at the rapid station, and realized one very important thing. Not that I needed to buy a ticket. And not that I didn't have any cash to do so. But the fact that I was DRIVING to work today -- remember the cat food thing?

Everything after that was pretty much a blur. I managed to get to the office a whole 14 minutes before I usually do (my plan was an hour and a half earlier). My shirt smells like coffee, my foot is STILL cold and all I can do is laugh about the whole thing. Why? Because I'm alive and well enough to laugh. I know that no matter how bad my morning was, I'm blessed beyond measure for the things in my life. I have a loving family, a wonderful daughter, great cats (who are so not happy with me right now), and friends who will be there for me no matter what. But most importantly, I laugh about it because it's funny.

A series of events unfolded that I was sure only happened in the movies. Nobody was hurt, no animals were harmed in the making of this film. The fact that I got to share it with you, is even better. I hope that, no matter what you've been through today, that this little slice of my life got you smiling and thinking to yourself "Hey I don't have it so bad .. I could be Trinity!"

Much Love
Be at peace with yourself and you'll be at peace with the world


2 comments:

Shari said...

HAHA!! LOVE it.
i felt like i was there with you. wish i could have been, so i could give you a big hug and laugh like crazy with you. <3 the paw in the mouth is awesome! haha.

Bonnielynn said...

I want a laundry fairy!!!