And the hits just keep on comin'

Yesterday I took a sick day - J had one of his periodic up-half-the-night-for-no-apparent-reason spells, I got about two hours of sleep, and I didn't trust myself to drive in to work without falling asleep at the wheel.

Today is my late day (I'm at work now), and I thought I'd do something useful with my couple of extra hours before I had to be here at 10 - I decided to get to Sears when the auto center opened and have my brakes done. I figured it would be an easy thing, an hour and a half tops, and I'd be on my way in plenty of time to get to work by 10. Ha, HA. Turns out I needed a hub bearing replaced on one side of my car - if I were to leave it and keep driving, the wheel could either just lock up or come off if the bearing were to go completely out. Neither of those sounded like particularly good options, so I told them to change it and called work to let them know I'd be a little late coming in. So - what time did I finally get to work? 4:30. Yep, I was waiting on my car for EIGHT HOURS. I have no idea what took so long, and I don't think they expected it to take that long. My cell phone battery had died while I was there, and when I plugged it in in the car, I had three voice mails. One was from K, two were from my manager - asking me to come see him when I got in, yes, I would need to work my late shift tonight, and that we'd have a discussion on Monday. I don't know about you, but a "discussion" with your manager always sounds ominous. So I had a flaming meltdown in my car - I cried until snot ran out my nose. J was up during the night again last night, he screamed when I left him at daycare this morning, I was hideously late to work due to events out of my control (can't exactly take the car and leave when the wheels are off of it), I'd just spent $700+ repairing something I didn't even realize was in need of repair, and now I was in the doghouse at work and my manager wanted to have a "discussion". It was just too much. I wanted to lay in the floor and cry for three days, and of course he was already gone when I got here. So I thought I'd have to stew all weekend.

Bless my team leader - she saw that I was upset, we talked for a while, and she gave me my manager's home number and told me to call him. She said it was upsetting me so much, she wanted me to call so I wouldn't stress all weekend. So I did. I think part of the problem was that my manager didn't realize today was my late shift. He asked had I been planning to be in by 10, and I said absolutely, I had no idea things would play out as they did. I think he appreciated that I went ahead and came in for my late night. I asked if I was in lose-my-job trouble, and he said no, that I was in the doghouse, but it was a manageable doghouse. So that's made me feel a little bit better. But still, overall, today has just sucked major ass.

When I'm done here, I'm going home, heating up some stir-fry, putting on my warm fuzzy jammies, fixing myself a HUGE margarita, putting some Eddie Izzard and Denis Leary on the DVD player, and laughing myself stupid. And if I feel the need, I'll probably have chocolate in some form, too. Hopefully all that will be balm for the wounded spirit, because right now I feel like I've been beaten with very large sticks.