I Don't Do Patience Very Well

My DVD player is temperamental. Sometimes it will play the movie all the way through without a glitch and other times, I barely get past the title and it's frozen. Freeze frame! Last night it was in one of its moods. I was all settled in with a hot chocolate (splash of Bailey's and some whipped cream = yum) when the film stopped. I press play. It goes. Then it stops. Oh balls!

So I get up, irritated that my cocoa time has been interrupted by my moody DVD player. I insert the cleaner disk and, with the help of Mikey, bypass track one (which for some reason is a musical introduction- huh? Why does a cleaning DVD need music?). As track two works its cleaning magic, I wait. And I wait. Three minutes feels like an hour. I ask, in a whinny voice, "How long does this take?" Mikey answers, "It's about 10 minutes but you don't have to let it run all the way through. It's only been 3 minutes so far." Checking the timestamp: 3:56. "Why does it feel like eternity? I am losing a year of my life right now." (I swear, I have no flair for the dramatic.) Mikey, after 10+ years of friendship knows this side of me well. "You have to have patience." As I roll my eyes at the TV screen, I reply, "I used up all my allotted patience earlier. Like before 11 am."

This is true. On both counts. I have a limited amount of patience (please, just let me blame my Aries nature) and I DID use it all up before 11 am. At work. Where else?

My job has changed again. This is the fourth position I have held there and that either indicates a) I am not good at anything or b) really good at lots of things. Let's go with b, shall we? It's way better for my ego. So, in changing my job, I am now in charge of all the volunteer programs as well as all the events. I have to absorb supervision of two people as well as continue to supervise the two already under me. One of the new supervisees is, um, well. . . challenged. He's the epitome of the hippy massage therapist. Santa Cruz abounds with them. They are like Gremlins. They multiply in the rain. He is a major space cadet. At 10:20 am I called him wondering where the F he was since our meeting was supposed to begin at 10. (I like punctuality.) He claimed we were meeting at 11:30. Uh no. We are meeting at 11:30 t-o-m-o-r-r-o-w. Today, we are meeting at 10. I haven't used the word "nincompoop" a whole lot in my life but seriously, this fella, he is one. And I am being nice.

When he does show up, he arrives at 11:45. Is my time not important to you Mr. Hippy Dippy? Because, I am a very busy, very important woman with lots of things to do. (Ha ha ha. Kinda?) I begin to ask him a bunch of questions about how he runs the program and just dive right in as I am wont to do (please see Aries nature again). He looks a bit out of sorts. A deer in headlights if you will. I don't think he is used to working at a fast pace (re: normal pace) because he is all massage-y and Zen and well, I have my namaste moments but this was clearly not one of them. He tries to give me a bunch of excuses as to why it appears he has done nothing in the months he has been running the program. They are just that, excuses. After looking through the material and talking with him I have surmised that a monkey could do this job. And lucky me, I am that monkey.

Please, pretty please, let today's meeting not be so painful.