This Fish Needs A Bicycle

already

Days like today aren’t as rare as they should be.

It started out just fine. Up willfully before 6:30 for some playtime with Sir Halitosis. A tangerine Popsicle for breakfast on the way to the train. Comfortable walking shoes. But by the time I hit the lobby doors, everything went… off.

Over the course of the next few hours, I tipped over the water cooler in the office kitchen, ticked off an executive vice president, and because of a forgetful mind and procrastination, missed out on tickets to a lecture I’d absolutely had my heart set on.

I know: they seem like little things. But some times the little things can be a really big deal.

It wasn’t my biorhythms; those turned out to be okay, according to Biscuit. So I did a quick diagnostic check. It wasn’t the who, the what, or the where of my day. It wasn’t anything I could pinpoint. Something was just off. So I decided I was going to do whatever it took to put it back on.

When I finally left work, I traded my sleek Ann Taylor calf skin slides for a pair of borrowed, too-big flip-flops and walked home, mostly through Central Park. I smiled at babies. I returned errant Frisbees. I sat perfectly still on a bench for twenty minutes and just breathed. And you know what happened? Not a goddamn thing.

If mother fucking nature couldn’t fix my funk, what could?

I stopped at the paint store. I sucked the hard candy shells off peanut M&Ms. And somewhere in the middle of therapeutic flirting, I excused myself and came home. I realized I was fighting the Universe for a losing cause. To quote the divine Ms. Sheryl Crow -- in a completely out-of-context sort of way --

So what if right now everything’s wrong?

Get over yourself and your bad day! Go home, take a bath, put on something scandalous and take yourself to bed. Put an end to it already!

Today may have had no reset button, but there is one guarantee: I get to get up and do it all again tomorrow. You know, barring any unforseen nocturnal disasters. And I’ll try to think of that as comforting because, really... it’s all I’ve got.

The M&Ms have been gone for hours.

Posted by This Fish at May 18, 2004 11:11 PM