Melisa Miller, Week One, Story One

One of Those Days

I had a feeling when I got up this morning that it was going to be one of those days where you put your pants on backwards. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before due to a nasty cold and my head was still a little loose from the Nyquil. But work doesn’t do itself and if I spent one more day away from it, I could have lost my job. Plus, my husband wasn’t exactly tuned in to my rampant coughing fits or one-hundred-and-one degree temperature, so the small benefits of sickness weren’t even enticing me anymore.
Not only did I nearly get rear-ended on my way to work but I was given the finger by a spandex clad bearded bicycle maniac who thought I was going to run him over for ebbing into the intersection while he was crossing. I can’t say I’ve ever been cussed out before breakfast, the effects are unexpectedly unsettling. Between my thirty-seven nose- blowing runs to the bathroom (tripping on the same cord across the floor twenty-one of those times) and all the crosschecks I had to do for the new data on the expenditure chart, I had little time to breath and minimum lung capacity to do it with.
I decided to slip out as early as humanly possible without punishment and the plan seemed flawless until my boss called me into his office and informed me I’d made a processing error so big it would “give the company a bad name,” as he so eloquently put it. He informed me that another such error would cost me my job. I sniffled as I walked by his secretary and the look on her face informed me that she thought I’d been crying. After resisting the urge to smack her across the face I tried to shut my mind off to the whole fiasco and go home to my soup, my husband, my dog, and my ever-so-comfortable new sofa.
I don’t know what precisely set me off after stepping in the door but my husband was eating my soup on my couch watching Star Trek and the dog had a mocking look in his eyes like he’d taken Greg’s side. I threw my briefcase to the ground and let out a battle cry. Noodles sputtered out of Greg’s mouth as he turned to look at me, his eyebrows about to jump off his face.
“You knew that was mine!”
“What?”
“My soup! What, do you think I’ve been taking a vacation the past three days? For the love of God, my nose is raw!”
“I don’t get it. What does that have to do with soup?”
“That’s not the point!” After that I let out another tribal grunt and another thought occurred to me.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“Honey-”
“What!” slipped out of my mouth faster than his wet noodles.
“You know they’ve been having lay-offs at work.”
“You were fired?”
“No. I was laid-off.” a sheep could have outspoken him and it just pissed me off more.
“Why aren’t you doing something about it?”
“There’s nothing I can do today. Besides, it’s not like you can talk. You haven’t exactly been ms. perky lately.”
“Can you not tell that I’m sick?!”
And with a shift in his seat and tilt in his head he threw the first bomb.
“Come on, honey… It’s not like you’re throwing up.”
The bomb whizzed by my ear and exploded on the island in the kitchen. The force sent me falling forward just far enough to grab onto the back of Greg’s shirt as he jumped off the couch to try and run. The back of the couch dug into my stomach as he dragged me forward and onto the new suede cushions. The smell of cow filled my nose as he swiveled around and shoved me away from him into the couch.
“How are we supposed to get by on one paycheck?!” I shouted with the little energy I had left in me.
“Well, you’re always saying how you make more money that I do. You’ve still got your cute little desk job.”
“Yeah, because you’re sloppy ass has trouble lifting itself off the couch!” Bullets narrowly missed Greg’s face as he hurled himself onto the shag carpet.
“What, you disagree? Okay, shoot!” I can’t say I don’t regret that comment… in retrospect…from the emergency room. But it sounded pretty good at the time. Needless to say I was struck in the shoulder and my new cow-sofa looked like it was spewing bloody sheep as bullets sent pillow fluff floating into the air. Even though I was wounded and my nose was dripping uncontrollably, I still had the will-power to hurl myself off the couch and crawl behind the divider between the living room and the dining room. There was an eerie silence for a good minute and I knew what I had to do.
“… I’m sorry. I’ve been a little jumpy today. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.” It took him a while to respond.
“Ok…”
“Please, Greg. You know I love you.” He let out an immature sigh of relief and I heard him swiftly pacing into the dining room. As he turned the corner, I whacked him across the face with a baseball bat. He fell to the floor and I dropped the bat. Gripping my shoulder and wiping my nose, I was finally content with my day. He should have known better. I always win when we argue.