Photo by Arno Smit – UnSplash
I was disappointed with 2018. It’s not that anything huge happened, but Taylor Swift didn’t write back and no one complimented me on my blue boots. It was just one disappointment after another. If you’ve read my other blogs, you will know that the pets around here are thankless demons and not one of them has a job prospect in the future.
So 2018 can go. Bye Bye.
Now that 2019 is set to arrive I am hoping for good things, major improvements in my lowly life that wouldn’t mean much to most people but would just streamline my everyday routine. I would like to have a day progress in a seamless fashion with no obstacles to overcome throughout the day.
New Year’s Eve started out promising. I was working dayshift on January 1, 2019 so the plan, as always, was to get up at 4:00 AM and proceed with the getting ready process and then off to work.
I went to bed really early and as I was drifting off to sleep, the Town Fireworks show started at the other end of town. Sounds reasonable. I keep my bedroom window open for the fresh air and the sound must have carried a bit. I awoke to two things happening simultaneously.
First, the sound of a full-on mortar attack just outside my window and me not properly dressed for a Red Cross Evacuation. I wasn’t even wearing earrings.
The second thing to happen right away was that THE HEIFER, who had been snuggled up to my side, also identified the sounds as DANGER and she promptly pressed her claws from all four feet into my body, thus using this hold to propel herself into the air, remain airborne until she landed on the floor, and then she ran for one of her many hiding places. If I recall, she did not once look back to see how I was making out.
I realized what the noises were so I got up for a minute to get a drink of water and left THE HEIFER to rot in her hiding place. Then back to bed to see if I could reclaim my sleep.
The next morning as I was driving to work, now 6:00 AM, I realized that Strathmore had virtually shut down. I like to buy my coffee here in town and take it to work, but it looked like everyone was closed.
Seriously people? There may have been some activity at McDonalds but I couldn’t take the chance to wait and find out I was wrong so I hit the Highway and headed for the coffee places in Falconridge, not far from my work area.
I got my supplies at McDonalds, along with a number of others who had the same idea and it took longer than I expected. But I did get enough coffee for the day so the New Year was starting off just O.K.
I arrived at work and relieved the night shift team. I logged on to my computer, got things organized and it wasn’t too long before I realized that my computer was struggling in a couple of places. I needed it to convert documents to Adobe very quickly so I could email them out to the officers and this wasn’t happening.
I tried to fix it but it was taking too long. I did my own workaround, but it was temporary and we had no IT people in. More bad stuff already in 2019.
Then I kept dropping stuff on the floor. You know those days where you seem to just let go of things for no reason? That was me. Pens, paper, headset – floor, floor, floor. At times when I went to grab my headset for a call, it would get tangled for no reason. As the phone was ringing off the hook, I was like some kind of kidnap victim trying to get out of my bindings before the bad guy came back. It was ridiculous.
So far, nothing was pretty about my new, improved year of 2019.
It kind of went like that for the rest of the day and evening. Just as I was getting ready to leave, an officer called in with a rather large arrest and I got started on the paperwork. It was complicated and there were a number of steps.
As the new team had come in to relieve us, there wasn’t a real good place in my workflow to hand it over and everyone was busy already with the new things that had just popped up. So I finished it up myself and got out the door at 7:20 PM for my drive back to Strathmore.
It was just a day of obstacles and stinky little things cropping up that I thought I had left behind in 2018. But now it appeared that whatever was going on in 2018 gave birth to a litter on New Year’s Eve and they descended on me early on January 01, 2019.
I’m not making any final judgements just yet, but it feels like I might be having a bit of a bad year here.
This is a small list of the little bits I am asking for as 2019 rolled in:
~ Every morning I will get out of bed on the first try with no aches or pains.
~ My hair and bangs will always be perfect.
~ There will be no hair growing out of the moles on my face.
~ My clothes will all fit every single day.
~ I will look simply fabulous no matter what time of day it is.
~ Everywhere I go there will be a parking space waiting just for me.
~ My purse will be light even when it’s full of stuff.
~ My key fob will always be right there when I need it.
~ When I walk into a Plus-Size store I will be asked to leave.
~ My family will magically become sane – (yeah, like your family couldn’t do a full hour on Dr. Phil).
~ No matter what I want to eat, when I open the fridge, it is right there on the shelf.
~ Cats clean their own litterboxes and never discuss with anyone how they do it.
~ Winter starts on December 23rd and Spring starts on February 1st.
Yup, that will be my 2019!
Let’s regroup in a year, shall we, and swap stories.