Elliot Garfield: OMmmmmmm
Paula McFadden: Is that it? Is that the last chorus?
Elliot Garfield: I am in a blissful state so don't bug me.
Paula McFadden: Is this going to be a regular routine? I mean, guitars at night. Humming in the morning. I've been in musicals that didn't have this much music.
Elliot Garfield: Miss McFadden, this morning I start rehearsals for my very first New York play. Probably the most important day of my life. Am I nervous? No, I am not nervous. Because I have meditated I am relaxed, I am calm, I am confident. You, on the other hand, have not meditated. Therefore you are a pain in the ass.
I quote this tonight, because, unfortunately, I have NOT meditated. I am NOT calm, not confident.
Someone earlier this weekend asked me, "When you get home at night, what do you do?" How sad is it that the answer to that question is often, "spend the night freaking out and screaming inside my head about CBL's email."
You see, when I'm telling CBL stories I mean them to be funny. They're amusing - to readers, to friends and, often, to me. But sometimes they're really not funny at all. Because, sometimes I don't have control of my life. She does.
Tonight, she was in all-out freak out mode. I can tell this by the way she structures her emails, the way she flurries multiple (like eight or ten) emails on one subject. The way she starts emails off with my name, like she's my mother scolding me as a toddler. "Miss Priz Mary Jane, do your homework right now!" She had a report to turn in, she's been "on vacation" for four days and she'd thought a database report I'd run on Friday contained the data she needed. Except she opened it at 7:15 and it wasn't in the format she needed. Hysteria ensued.
When she couldn't get ahold of me, she emailed just about every other person on my team. None of whom, by the way, have access to the data I do, since I am the only non-VP master user. I watched all of this happen, of course, via Blackberry, as my name got spammed around the Carbon Copy universe.
What is the right response in this situation? Do I just ignore her, stick my proverbial fingers in my ears and say, "na na na I can't heeeeear youuuuuuuu. It's past my bedtime"? Do I respond with my own flurry of emails, apologizing left right and center and proving myself to be the good little employee that I am? Do I hold my ground and respond and say "Now, CBL, relax. The report will get run in the morning and no one will die and no one will bleed out on the OR table"?
Yes, of course, that would be the centered, calm, meditative response.
I, on the other hand, spent two hours generating the report, screaming at the walls and generally getting my adrenaline and blood pressure up. It's now 10:30, my alarm goes at 5 am and I'm still hours away from relaxing enough to get a decent night's sleep.
Of course, there is ONE small thing that I am revelling in in the midst of all this chaos. It's childish, it's ridiculous, and GoodBuddy would yell at me and tell me I'm being an idiot. But that's not going to change it.
You see, CBL loves to labor under the impression that she and I have sooooo much in common. We're like so, totally, BFFs and so alike.
So, tomorrow, when she shows up to the office in her Ann Taylor suit and David Yurman jewelry, this is what I'll be wearing:
- Purple pants with brightly colored yoga sutras embroidered on them
- Purple toenail polish
- A henna tattoo snaking (literally) around my upper arm
Maybe, just maybe, with all that outward expression of my inner self, I can actually find some inner self to center my universe around. Maybe.
