My days start and end with a whole bunch of stress that we like to call orange barrel season. Work traffic isn’t usually bad for me, but ever since we moved in, they’ve been replacing the street. Until a few weeks ago they were at the other end of the road not regularly interrupting my life. Now a five lane road is cramped into two lanes and half an intersection is missing. Our drive way at our apartment complex doesn’t have an in or out anymore and the construction equipment not stored in the big ditch that used to be a road is stored in our parking areas and pulled out about the same time I leave for work. Avoiding construction through changing my route to work would require the creation of a new driveway or teleportation.

That used to be road

Yesterday I shared pictures that can’t event capture the mayhem that is road construction. The conditions that cause idiot switches to be flipped and people to drive on the wrong side of the road or barrels. Two days ago I turned onto my street and came nose-to-nose with a lady in a minivan who was obviously not aware that the road was still a two way street. I am stressed when I get to work in the morning and stressed when I arrive home in the evening.

Add on wisdom tooth pain and a husband who has been home sick for two days and you have my morning.

I had been at work for nearly an hour when I spilled coffee. The whole cup (and probably some extra) spilled on my desk, the proposal I was reading, my shirt, my pants, my sweater, my chair, the floor and, as I found later, on the underside of my desk. After cleaning up my desk, I walked in my soaked clothes out to my car and went home to change and battle the construction again. After startling my sleeping husband (I called, I texted, he slept) I changed out of my clothes and threw them in the washer. I then returned to work where I risked it with a second cup of coffee.

My office smells like coffee. And not the pleasant “mmm freshly brewed coffee” smell. The “I’m an idiot and need a sippy cup” smell.

Here’s the kicker, my laptop was completely missed. The four other electronic devices (two of which are company property, my phone and my OmniPod PDM) which were also in the spill zone, remained dry.

What did I really ruin? My mood.

The proposal can be reprinted, my desk is dry again and my clothes can be washed.

My mood is taking a little longer to come around. Hopefully it gets there sooner rather than later.