Even the simplest things, around these parts, become bogged down in a morass of minutiae.
Every year, one of our printers has a Day Out at the Races - Sandown, to be precise, which is not precisely Ladies' Day at Ascot, it's just corporate hospitality, but eh, it's a jolly. This year, UberBoss can't go. Would the publishing department like to go instead? Yes please, we said - or actually, it was more a grudging 'Yeah, why the hell not?', but 'yes please' is what we would have said if we were nice people. All well and good. Except for the problem of how to get to Sandown. M goes from Marlow; L goes from Oxford. I can't drive at all. Impasse.
So, it occurred to me today that the obvious thing (I say 'obvious', it took me a week) was to go down to London the evening before, after work, and spend the night at L (other L)'s flat in Vauxhall, which is only one mainline stop away from Waterloo. Aside from this meaning that I'll be wandering round the racecourse with an overnight bag containing my nightie and yesterday's underpants, all is well: L says yes, it's fine by her and, after my second email in which I said um, when I said could I stay Tuesday, clearly I meant Wednesday because I can't read a calendar, she still said yes. Other than concerns over tube strikes and will we be able to get across London at all: all sorted.
Until I remembered that J is away on a course for the first three days next week, which means that if I go down to London on Wednesday night, there will be no-one here to look after the cats ...
Some things, one can't help but feel, were not meant to be.
Among them is my day off this week. I put in a form to ask for this Friday and next Monday, but M said she was away on Friday and, since L's still away, she doesn't want to leave the department empty. (This is not a concern that ever occurs to Sales & Marketing, I must say. There are whole stretches of the week when tumbleweeds are blowing through their office.) Which left me mightily Miffed. Not that I actually had plans or anything, it's the principle of the thing.
Very tired today, and horribly depressed. LJ person posted a mindset thingy for depression: ... when you feel yourself sliding into Bleak Despair, you ... HALT. And ask yourself "Am I hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired?" Maybe the world isn't a miserable pit of horror, maybe you need a cookie. Or a nap. Or a hug. Or to resolve something with someone. Which is a fine, fine, principle: but I am too fat to eat cookies, the things I am angry about are unreasonable and have to be suppressed at all costs, if I slept any more (as I have said before) I would be in a coma, and there's no-one anywhere near to administer hugs, welcome though they would be. So, Bleak Despair it is, I'm afraid. Sorry, and all that. I tried.
