when your dirty past catches up with you

yeah, so you know i've boasted about waiting till the last minute, languishing around the house instead of getting going but still scraping by on a wing and a prayer?

i knew that kind of behavior was going to come back and bite me on the booty one of these days.

this morning i was supposed to be on an 8:05 a.m. flight out of LAX. i know i have bitched about chicago traffic before, too. but L.A. is a different jungle altogether. we meant to leave around 6:15 to get to the airport by 7. except for that gd snooze button that entices me every freaking morning. i skipped a shower to sleep longer with the excuse that i would do online check-in from the house to save even more time. even so, we ended up leaving around 6:45. the kiss of death, i tell you. but what i don't get is how the carpool lane moves just as slowly, if not slower than the other lanes. and it's as though people have nowhere to be! good LORD, i would go berserk having to drive in L.A. all the time. it's bad enough here. laid-back attitude? no thank you, ma'am.

to make what could be a very lengthy rant concise: i missed my flight. by MINUTES. it was 7:58 and we were about a block from the terminal. i had seen people make flights by showing up mere minutes before -- and done it myself a few times -- but no such luck today.

and what's worse is that i had planned on getting home at 2 p.m. to have a couple hours to go home, shower and get my work stuff together before fighting my own local form of hell to be at work by 6. um, yeah. i was on standby for a flight that got in at 4:10 p.m., essentially the time i'd have to hit the road to be able to clock in on time. so my dirty, tired, sleepless (there was an old lady bumping my seat and yammering for nearly FOUR HOURS behind me on the plane) ass dragged itself straight to work. no work gear. dressed in the ratty jeans i'd worn all weekend, a crumpled t-shirt and a pilly, stretched out tie-up sweater that i covered myself with as much as possible so the boss wouldn't see the cracked iron-on lettering of 'rosalie's diner' on my shirt peeking out from under it when he called me into a meeting. which only had three people in it.

it gets better. this week i am the late person, so as soon as i get in, it's catch-up time. which is cool, except for when the only thing you've had to eat all day was a tall mocha from starbucks and you have probably slept about 3.5 hours in the last 30 hours. and you have a headache. AND you have dungeon duty.

so here i am. my temples are throbbing. i'm waiting for reports. i'm resisting every last urge to put my head down on this cool formica tabletop and pass the hell out. i'm making my good old dad haul his booty all the way out here to pick me up at 3 a.m. but the poor man has to wait down the street because security won't let him into the parking lot. so i'll have to truck my happy ass out there to the corner. a block away from the seedy YMCA where people are always loitering about and leering. my poor sweet old pops.

i'm sorry i'm so cranky. i think i'm in a bad mood. but i guess i had it coming.