...Willem.

I had a bad day yesterday. Just a long string of situations in which I thought I was doing the right thing but it turns out I was completely wrong.

Like, I emailed the secretary administrative assistant Woman in Charge at my grad school yesterday to let her know that I'd culled the internship list down from 17 to 7. Her response was, "Well, it would have been nice to know this last week before I printed off all those letters for you." Umm... yeah, I agree. Would have been nice if *I* had known, too.

Like, I got a call from Perfect J at work (note to self: write a post about coworkers, they deserve it) asking where was my paperwork from my weekend overtime and why wasn't it in? I said, "Well, I talked to the woman who needs the paperwork, and she said she doesn't need it until noontime, so I'm planning to drop it off around 10:00." Which earned me the Wrath of Perfect J, along with a touch of scorn and righteousness. How dare I assume that Perfect J doesn't do every job in the building, and perfectly?

Like, I showed up for my neurology appointment smack on the dot of 10:30. I get migraines, and now that I have health insurance I can talk about new medication options instead of continuing to take my current medication, which either knocks me unconscious or makes me cartoonishly jittery, doing exactly the opposite of whatever state of consciousness I'd like to maintain. So I arrived for my appointment and was kind of proud of myself for being on time, since it had been a busy morning. Except... turns out my appointment was at 10:20, not 10:30, so between paperwork and being "ten minutes late" I had to reschedule for Thursday.

Like, I took my cat to the vet for a routine checkup/shots/torture-via-carrier, and discovered that she has really bad teeth on one side and needs 2 or 3 pulled.

So I spent last night in a combination cleaning frenzy/pity party, trying to get my house in order to make up for the myriad ways in which I thought I was doing the right thing only to have reality smack me upside the head during the day. Woe is me.

Then I did it again this morning, got Emily up and dressed and ready for school and let Jacob and Willem sleep, only to discover that Willem expected me to get both kids up and off to school so he could sleep in. Which is not entirely unreasonable... a little unreasonable, maybe, but not entirely. I've gotten both kids up before, I just wasn't planning on it today.

And then I had an unexpected 90-day review with my supervisor at work. Which ended up being just fine, I felt like her feedback was accurate and - even more exciting - like she heard what I had to say, but it was not on my radar and I felt sort of sprung-upon.

So, to come back to my desk and find a bright, colorful, fragrant bouquet of miniature sunflowers and Gerbera daisies was all it took to nudge me over the edge and I had my first crying jag at work. At least I was alone in the office at the time.

I'm not quite sure what I did to deserve flowers, but I'm grateful to have a husband who is willing and able to nudge me back away from that self-pitying ledge that I really do not want to go over again.