April 12, 2011

• Another Bad Day to end all Bad Days

  .
  “Into each life, some rain must fall.”
  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  
  “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.” Woody Allen
  
  “You can’t really have the good without the bad.”
  old homily
  
  “…every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it.”
  Peter Gibbons in the movie “Office Space”
  
  “If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times out of ten it will.”
  Paul Harvey
  
  “Life’s a bitch. And then you die.”
  saying from a button
  
  “At least when the bad sh*t happens on a Friday, I have the whole weekend to recover!”
  Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
  
  “So how was your day?”
  innocuous greeting not meant to elicit an answer
  
  

  Everything was going so well. My best laid plans were right on track. April was the month I knew I had to pay Uncle Sam over $800.00 in taxes. Like some aged eagle scout, I always prepare to be prepared. I’ve been squirreling away cash in my savings account since December. April is a five paycheck work month, and almost one whole paycheck would be allotted to my taxes. Earlier in the year I had created a spreadsheet which seemed to allay my worst fears. I would be able to pay all my bills on time, pay the taxes, and still have a little money in the bank. On May 1st, my 58th birthday, I might even get myself some kind of present, I told myself. Maybe take a short trip. Maybe get the 3D attachment for my projection TV. My chickens hadn’t yet hatched, but I was just…this…close to counting them all and sending them on their merry way.
  
  True, my first upper left molar was finally giving me enough pain that I scheduled a dentist appointment for April 1st, but I only planned on getting the tooth pulled right away, which is only $3.00 on my insurance plan.
  
  True, I discovered that one of my tires was leaking. I used a credit card to rack up $400.00 to get a new set. I was a couple of years overdue anyway. Tires aren’t an emergency. I’ve had to buy them before, and doubtless will have to buy them again a few years down the road. Pulling a tooth and replacing tires were merely happenstance. Every day occurrences.
  
  Then the roller coaster that is my luck decided to gain speed, lose it’s brakes, run off the track, and explode in a fiery ball of flame. It didn’t take long.
  
  I had a pretty bad day this past Friday. Not the worst day of my life, mind you, but it’s got to be in the top ten. Possibly the top five. It’s been said I had a bad day coming out of the womb, and most days since then have been full of stress and pain. I can finally type a bit on the keyboard without pain shooting through my wrist. That makes today pretty good, all things considered. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
   
  The first Friday of the month began  a mite badly, possibly having a good laugh to itself, on the dawning of All Fool’s Day. The first clue that things were about to go horribly wrong was early on the morning of the 1st, the day I had scheduled the dentist’s appointment. Upon rising, I checked my finances, and my direct deposit, usually made at midnight, wasn’t in the bank. I just figured the controller at work was having a joke on me. She had forgotten to fill out the furlough day form. Not for the whole company, mind you. Just for me. She apologized, and wrote me a check. I asked her for a little more than usual, as a loan. For some reason, that spreadsheet I created hadn’t given me an accurate picture of the fiscal picture for April. Perhaps I neglected to factor in a couple of things. Like my last two tank fillups at the gas station at $4.02 and $4.09 a gallon (and rising.)
  
  That first Friday of the month ended pretty well. After the tooth was pulled, I was feeling no pain, and that is always a good thing. I scheduled another appointment for the 13th (which isn’t a Friday) to get fitted for a partial. I did end up driving a friend around town later that evening, but that wasn’t bad luck. I volunteered.
  
  On Monday the 4th, I had to call in sick to work. I’d sprained my wrist over the weekend doing yardwork, and the pain was a little intense. I didn’t want to risk hurting it more testing and torquing heavy control panels at work, so I wrapped it in an ace bandage, and took it easy. I wore the ace bandage into work on Tuesday. By Tuesday evening the pain had pretty much vanished. I had good days for the rest of the week. The two projects which had been keeping me at work for 12 hour days during most of the last month and a half had shipped, so it wasn’t as stressful, and I was getting a lot of work done. (Even with the day off on Monday.) 

   

  Besides the possible omen of finding my paycheck hadn’t been deposited in my bank, “Bad Friday” began with no undue problems. The sun rose as usual. The birds could be heard singing their morning song. I left for work early (4:30am early, a habit I’ve gotten into after working all those 12 hour shifts) so that I could begin testing a boatload of control panels which had been steaming into the harbor that is the test area since early in the week, when my right hand was in pain, and I wasn’t able to test them. Again, plans had been made. Perhaps I would be able to get a lot of work done early in the day, and go home earlier than usual.

   

  After arriving at work (I’m the only one in the office till around 7:00am) I “speed tested” 12 simple 125A transfer switches, and began preparing for some 7.5HP reversing disposal panels. By the time people started arriving, I was 15 down with about 20 to go. It’s been a good month so far. Our engineer told me the conference room table had a wobbly leg. He’d noticed it the day before. Good thing I’d cleared panels from that area and not stacked any on it.

   

  “Let’s move it to the back” I declared, in full multitasking mode. I lifted up one end of the 8 foot long fiberboard monster, and proceeded to round the corner into the hall. “I’ll take the lead” I proclaimed.

   

  Not 8 feet down the hall, something in my right wrist snapped. I dropped my end of the table pretty quickly. I guess I screamed or yelled so loudly everyone in the rest of the building heard. I was grabbing my wrist, seared through with terrible pain. Pain that I wouldn’t wish on the worst person in the world. I’ve lived with pain, This pain shocked me. Somehow, the sprain which had seemed to go away by Tuesday had come back with a vengeance.

   

  One of our inside saleswomen rushed to the refreigerator and offered me a bag of frozen corn as a compress. Somebody volunteered to call 911. I got a large salad bowl from the cupboard above the coffee area and started to soak my wrist. Not a lot of swelling, No redness to speak of. But it felt as if all the tendons in my wrist had been snapped in twain. Because I seem to try to prepare for anything, I still had the ace bandage in my desk drawer, and I wrapped my wrist.

   

  I told everyone I was going to go home for the rest of the day. I couldn’t even use the computer keyboard or mouse, let alone test the rest of the panels. I’ve been calling one or our vice presidents “Dr. Veep” because she’s always very helpful with medical advice. I didn’t want her to tell me I had to go to the doctor when she found out about this. She came in the office before I was able to leave, however, and yes, she cautioned me to go to the doctor. “This happened last weekend”, I said. “Lifting the table only exacerbated the condition. It’s not like it’s a workplace accident!”

   

  She offered to pay my copayment. I shuddered to think that I’d now spend most of the morning in the waiting room of the urgent care center. “They’ll xray, tell me it’s sprained, give me a scrip for some pain medication and tell me to go home”

   

  “It could be a borderline fracture”, Dr. Veep answered.

   

  No use in attempting to fight with her. I succumbed to her prognosis, and I ended up spending the rest of the morning in the waiting room at the urgent care center. I went through two of those “emergency ice bags” which I kept pressed against the pain. Finally my name was called When asked if I was on any pain medication, I told the nurse that I had some acetaminophen from the dentist for having my tooth pulled the week previous. My wrist was xrayed. It hurt terribly when I had to remove and rewrap the ace bandage. All the medical personnel asked me if I’d wrapped my wrist myself, by the way, and complimented me on the job.

   

  The xray showed no damage. Simple sprain. I was offered a splint (with velcro straps) and a sling. The nearly three hours had not passed quickly, but were now over. As I walked back to my car, arm in my new sling, I was glad I hadn’t put the top down, as it had begun to rain a bit. I had left the windows open, and my seat was a bit damp. I found it difficult to start the car, since the key is on the right side of the steering column, and even pulling the safety belt in place was a bit of a chore, but in minutes I was approaching the parking lot of our office. My troubles were over.

   

  Not so fast.

   

  While making a left turn in the parking lot, I heard a terrible screech come from deep in the bowels of the engine compartment. I lost my power steering, and almost immediately little red “idiot lights” started to light up like a Chirstmas tree on my instrument cluster. I not too deftly (since the power steering was gone) maneuvered the car into a nearby parking spot, unlatched the hood, and assessed the damage. None of my belts were turning. Not a good sign.

   

  When one door closes, another is left open for one to fall through into the abyss. Two hours later, my car had been towed to the nearest Mitsubishi dealer, and I spent another three hours in a waiting room. Through normal “wear and tear”, my main belt pulley had broken in half. One wheel was spinning freely, but the other which holds all the belts was not, hence all the idiot lights coming on at once. Another $450.00 charged to my credit card. At least the dealership had the part in stock, and wasn’t that busy. By 3:00pm, (the time I usually get off work) I was driving home.

   

  While in the waiting room at Mitsubishi (which just happens to be in the middle of the new car showroom) a salesman chatted me up and tried to interest me in the purchase of a new car. (I couldn’t help but think that as soon as any new car’s odometer clicks over 100,000 miles, things would start to “wear out” and break on it too, same as on my car, which as purchased before it was a year old!

   

  At least I didn’t get in a wreck on the way home. We didn’t have any earthquakes. The sky didn’t open up and swallow anything. I didn’t contract any food poisoning when I ate dinner. I was able to get a good nights rest without dying in my sleep. Worse things have happened.

   

  So it’s now a few days later, and I can even take the splint off my wrist and use the computer. I did have to learn to use one hand for lots of tasks thought by me to be pretty simle beforehand, like dressing myself and washing dishes. If I turn my right wrist wrong, it hurts. The weekend was mainly spent watching my massive backlog of entertainment on my bigscreen. Our engineer and another technician tested yesterday’s batch of control panels.

   

  Tonight the sun will set and it will rise again tomorrow. I just hope it will be another good day, and not one of the bad ones.

   

  Like “Bad Friday”.

   

  So how was your day?

  • 10:03 am
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