Because life is one, big Charlie-Foxtrot

Murphy's Law is this: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."  Murphy can bite me.

I was home with a feverish child yesterday (he wasn't feverish anymore, actually, but school rules are such that the child must be fever-free for 24 hours before being allowed back.)  As a result, I was not picking up voicemail messages and I was not my usual quick-responding self in regard to emails.  So, of course, that meant that one of the bigwigs needed me to schedule a conference call for today with himself, another corporate bigwig, and two of our volunteer bigwigs.  And, of course, the two internal bigwigs had schedules that allowed for maybe a cumulative total of 90 minutes over the course of the day during which this call could be scheduled.  And, to add insult to injury, one of the external bigwigs was away from his office, and his assistant did not have the details of his schedule available.  Sooooo, when I finally got the schedule information for everyone involved (i.e., 5:45 this morning, since the final message came in after I went to sleep last night), I was able to determine that the call could not happen with all of the necessary parties, and I had to create a convoluted matrix of calls to provide opportunities for all of the interested parties (and the parties who weren't interested at all, but had to be involved anyway) to obtain and respond to the relevant information.

There was a speaker seminar at our office today, and our CEO invited a few of our local volunteer bigwigs to attend.  One of them, who can be somewhat of a high maintenance lady, gladly accepted both the offer to attend and the CEO's kind offer that we would arrange for a car service to transport her to and from our fine facility.  And, like a good worker bee, I contacted the car service via email to give the address and timing information, and requested a response to confirm.  I got the response, and was therefore not concerned about whether the car would show up to pick up Ms. I-Can't-Be-Bothered-To-Drive-My-Own-Damned-Self-From-Northern VA-To-MD.  So imagine my distress first thing this morning at having multiple voicemail messages from the car service guy, left during the course of the day yesterday, saying that he needed some clarification.  I spoke with car service guy as soon as I got his messages, and he told me that he had conctacted my lady directly last night, and everything was A-OK.  Silly me, assuming that his assurance would result in the driver assigned to said job showing up at the address I gave him, as opposed to an address with a similar name (different spelling) in a whole other Northern VA city (different county, too, technically).  Since we all know how much I love to be stared at when I walk into a room at work, my comfort level at having to come in the front door of the auditorium in the middle of the speaker's presentation to walk bigwig to her reserved seat is pretty easy to predict, yes?

The School Aged Progeny are on Spring Break from now until next Thursday.  The Husband is on Spring Break from now until March 31, and is using the extra days that he has off (sans childcare responsibilities) to go on a mini-golf vacation.  I had scheduled myself some time off early next week, with the intention of going away solo, with the cover story that I was going to some offsite training.  A friend from work (whose name I shall not mention in an effort to let everyone make whatever the hell assumptions come to mind, since speculating and gossiping is fun) was also scheduled to take some time off and we had planned to spend some time not working and not having the day-to-day hassles that our lives entail.   Which is fun and great and all, except that said friend just got word that the time off isn't going to happen because of having to cover a screwup on the part of another department.  So, I canceled by leave (pending a reschedule when both our schedules permit). I tweaked my cover story with The Husband, telling him that I am going to reschedule my training so that I can be here next week, since I've missed so much time during the past couple weeks with illness (mine or the kids').

Right at this moment, life is flipping me the bird.

(So, I lied about censoring myself.  Sue me.  I like to see how many people get the implied cursing in some of the terms I use.)