Arkansas Diamonds

And I really need this one. This week will not go down as one of my favorites. To say it was a rough week it a serious understatement.The dratted day job has been extremely annoying to begin with. Too many projects, too many people pulling on me from different directions and of course, everyone thinks their stuff has priority.

By Wednesday, I was ready to implode. The lady boss (I have three bosses, the lady boss, the male boss and the boss' boss) called and said the boss' boss was ready for the financial reports to be run. Instead of letting me run them in the simplest order, he wanted the one that takes at least an hour to run on a good day done first.Fine. I ran it. Started at 3:30, finished at 4:40. Sent it and started the rest of the shorter reports.

A little after five, the lady boss called to say there was something wrong with the report. I worked through the format, found the issue and started running it again. Started at 5:30.I usually get off work at 5:00. I've got a dozen things to do Wednesday night, one of which is a chat where I want to promote a couple of my upcoming books. It starts at seven and it takes an hour to get home.But needless to say, I won't make the first part of the chat.

Halfway through the report, the computer beeps. Imagine my horror when I see the little network icon calmly mentioning something about being disconnected from the network. I literally screamed. And then I went looking for our IT dude with murder in my heart. I found him with cables surrounding him. Loose cables from the computer.

To my surprise, I managed to calmly ask what he was doing. He seemed surprised I was still there but he mumbled something about switches. My mind conjured a vision of the tiny branches from a bush my mother used to spank us with as children. It seemed to fit the mood. IT dude said he thought I was gone. He had checked my office and I wasn't there. I asked him if my door was open and my light was on. He nodded. "Yeah, they were." My voice rose as I asked whether he'd ever seen me leave my office unlocked and my light on when I was gone. He agreed he hadn't. At that point, my scream of "I was in the f*****g bathroom" could be heard in the next county.

His response of"Ooops" could be grounds for murder.

Upon returning to my office, I contacted the boss' boss and the lady boss and explained the situation. They agreed I should leave the report running and resend it from home. I grabbed my stuff and hit the door running. It was 6:30 and if the rainy weather didn't interfere too much, I'd only miss about half an hour of the chat.

Speeding down a dark, rainy, busy highway less than 10 miles from the office, my car decided it didn't want to go any more. No matter how much I pressed the accelerator, it kept slowing down. Giving in to the inevitable, I steered off the road on to the shoulder. Grabbing the trusty cell phone to call anyone I can think of in a panic, I heard a sound that sent chills down to my very soul. The beep of a low cell phone battery.

Let me sum up. I'm on the side of the road in the dark, the cold, the rain nearly 50 miles from home and my cell phone is dying. And I don't have a car charger. Could this night get any worse?

The beeping phone rings. It's the lady boss wanting another report when I get home. She gets the brunt of my panic. She tells me to calm down. She would call someone. And who do you think she would call? Who would she know who is less than ten miles from where I broke down? You guessed it. IT Dude.

And instead of saying let the biatch suffer for screaming at me, he showed up about ten minutes later. Called a friend who deals with auto repair, got me the number of a wrecker service, let me use his car charger so I could call my mother and then drove me 25 miles to meet my mother halfway so I could go home.

Did I feel like less than dirt? Yes. Did I apologize for being cranky? Yes. Did he score enough brownie points for the next year of stupid IT foul ups? Yes.

So my poor car is still in the shop. A broken timing belt led to damaged valves. The parts should be there Monday and hopefully I'll be mobile again by Tuesday.

As you can see, I really needed this weekend. Now I'm off to write fiction instead of whining some more on here.