We've all had 'em. We've all lived 'em. We all hate them. I'm talking about the 'bad day' - where nothing goes right, and even menial stuff goes wrong. Mine was a nasty night that turned into a disastrous day:
It all started when Sarah and I decided to escape the frigid weather and duck into an italian restaurant on the UWS last night. Coppola's was the restaurant of choice. I had the lobster ravioli (this is an important piece of information we'll get to later). Anyway, the restaurant was full - the atmosphere was nice and intimate - and Sarah was her usual fun self. Then came the delivery men. Seriously, the delivery men - hired by Coppola's - head-to-toe parka - became a bustling traffic line from the kitchen in the back of this restaurant to the front door. So every 5 minutes, one was whizzing by and opening a door leading out to a VERY COLD NYC night. I was a tightly wound wad of shivering annoyance. Sarah tried to joke with our weird waiter, and he had zero sense of humor. Overall - blah.
After dinner, I was full and cold. I came home and went to sleep. Around 2am - woke up and saw my ravioli a second time. And a third. And a fourth. My stomach was a mess, and between night sweats and teeth-brushing - I had resolved to drop any future patronage to Coppola's.
Morning came, and I got ready for work. Grabbed my purse on the way out the door, and while putting my cell phone in it - I noticed that the bag of pistachios I had put in their the previous day had erupted. So as I said, "You've got to be kidding me" under my breath, one of the nuts looked back at me and laughed. It was unbelievable - shells and green and that nut casing - about 50 of them, scattered throughout my Michael Kors wonder. I figured I'd "shuck" them when I got into work, because I was running late.
Got to Penn Station and at the turnstyle, realized I had accidentally thrown away my recently purchased unlimited Metrocard for my expired Metrocard. So I stood in a 10-person deep line, and when I finally made it to the machine - it had stopped taking credit cards. Guess what? The other one only took cash too. And then guess what? Well, the obvious conclusion that I didn't have any cash hit me. I dug into my pistachios purse, looking for any loose change or even a bill to help me get a 2-dollar card, and that meant clearing all the nuts out of my bag. I started dumping the nuts into the trash can, and people started staring. One guy cleverly said, "That's kinda nutty." I didn't laugh. At all.
So now it's on to Duane Reade for a cash machine, and yep - it's drained. Now, steam starts forming in my head, and I unwrap my scarf around my neck and face, ready for the eruption from my ears. I head back upstairs to the street, and quickly search for an ATM. I find one - get money and jump into a cab (because now I'm really late). The cab driver thinks I say "head to 165th" instead of "head to 65th" and on the Westside Highway around 79th Street - I freak out, accusing him of talking on the phone too much instead of listening to where I said I was going. And you know what? He argues with me - saying I told him 165th and St. Nick! I'm like "I would never say St. Nick - you're dead wrong." Then, out of fear that he was going to dump me on the side of the highway - next to a very cold Hudson River, I shut my mouth and sulked. We make it to work with only 2 minutes to spare.
I still haven't cleaned out all the nuts in my purse, and when I walk into the bathroom to get myself together - I find that I've somewhere dropped a glove on my way into work. But I only have about a minute to curse myself for that fact, because when I gaze in the mirror, I see that I have a clearly defined lipstick mark from the edge of my lip to mid-cheek. I get my face together, and walk into the newsroom to face the day.
Now, today was my 7th day in a row at work - so my brain is already spent. I now have to endure the Assignment Editor job, which they should really rename the Logisitical Nightmare job - because it's 8 hours of feeds and mayhem and coordinates. And with the space cadet story evolving, and a million hearings on Capitol Hill - there are too many things happening. I felt like in the middle of it all - I should have done performance art by standing on top of the Assignment desk and juggling 17 pieces of fruit while standing on one leg with one eye glued shut and a broken elbow, because that was pretty what my brain was doing all day.
Got out of work - again into sub-zero temps - miss a train by inches, get home to an envelope full of complicated tax filing information. Great - something fun to look forward to.
