Never has 4:00 come so slowly

Thank. The. Everliving. $DEITY. The air conditioner has just kicked on, a sure sign that it is 4:00. The sun has officially gone over the yardarm for this week in history.

WOO HOO! Let the hair down and start drinkin’!!! Er! I mean…let us put on our weekend attire and retire to the patio for some refreshments.

Seriously. I thought 4:00 would never, ever get here today. Never. Ever. I was starting to think I was going to be stuck forever and ever in this endless Friday workday.

It has been that kind of day. Started at 6:00 this morning, didn’t get off to lunch until 1:30. THEN I wasted half of it ranting on my blog while overcooking my lunch. And then, halfway through eating?

Emails. IM. The @*^& cell phone rang. BONG! **swoosh! swoosh!** Bong! BONG! {chirp, chirp} RING!

My dining room sounded like a Best Buy at Christmas time. And then, my phone began putting forth a truly bizarre cacophony of sound. Such a weird combination of chirps, rings, swoopy noises and buzzing, I have never heard from my Treo before.

Welllll, turns out, it was trying to simultaneously field a call from my mother, a client in Texas, and tell me that I had a new voicemail message. I picked it up trying to discover why it was making such racket, hit the wrong button and had no choice but to talk to the Chosen One I found myself connected to: The Texan client!

Of course it was the client in Texas. My mother would have been more forgiving about the fact that I, the Expensive Database Consultant, had been confounded by something as basic as a cell phone and accidentally answered it with a mouth full of noodles.

Have you ever tried to subtly eat Ramen noodles while talking on a cell phone?

Have you ever succeeded? At the subtle part, I mean? Because I…did not. “Oh, did I catch you during lunch?”

Yes, princess, you did. Yes, it is odd that I am eating lunch at 2:00 on a Friday. I further recognize that out in your neck of the woods, it is 4:00 – which makes it practically dinner time. I bear you no ill will, however, because I did in fact have the ‘ignore’ button option, and did not choose to use it. Or at least, I would have had the ‘ignore’ button option, except that my phone was kind of freaked out and trying to show me multiple phone numbers and I hit the button that said ‘OK’ and suddenly…there you were.

Which is really not your fault, now, is it.

Besides. It’s just that kind of day. It’s the kind of day when you find out that the yarn you just bought at full price three days ago went on sale at 40% off, or that the only relative in the whole extended family you just really can’t stand is planning to visit for three weeks, or that the full-sized freezer full of meat in the garage has been sitting there with the door ajar for a week.

That’s the kind of day it is. It doesn’t even have the decency to be truly life threatening. Just…annoying.

That’s what today was. Just…annoyance after annoyance after annoyance. For hour upon hour upon hour. From 6:00 a.m. until fifteen minutes ago, a steady stream of annoyances have been preying upon my psyche.

But no more!!

First order of business: Shower.
Second order of business: Cosmopolitan martini.
Third order of business: Sausage in Polenta into the oven.
Fourth order of business: Find somewhere to hide until the Denizens are safely in their little beds.

Happy weekend, everybody. If only the next two days could be as long as today felt…