Allow Me

I am, to quote Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, at the end of my rapidly fraying rope. And all it took to push me that close to the edge was one innocent trip to the bathroom. I went to wash my hands, and there it was: A bare paper towel roll; a skeleton of a roll with old tracks where the glue used to hold the paper to the cardboard. I shook my hands violently to free them of the water I’d just drowned them in, and threw open the door. “I swear to God,” I said, loudly enough to be heard throughout the office. “If you use the last of it, replace it.” I continued to huff and silently complain as I went into the cabinet containing all of the other perfectly good – and new – rolls of paper towels in the office.

This comes on the heels of replacing the toilet paper roll at home last night, where one lone paper clung for dear life to the roll, his other Cottonelle friends having long since abandoned him at the hands of my lovely boyfriend and me. But I know I didn’t leave that one stupid sheet there. But Billy’s sick, so, mentally citing his fever, body aches, chills and near overdose on Tylenol for the oversight, I lovingly replaced it. Then went downstairs to get him ginger ale and the AlkaSeltzer Flu I bought him.

I woke up (late) this morning and flew through my getting-ready routine. When I'm late, I always wear my hair up. Always. And the updo is always aided by many a bobby pin and a generous helping of hairspray. I pin the hair on top of my head back, then twist the rest of it up into a classy-yet-messy, uh, twist. As I was fighting with a bobby pin, jamming it into a mass of my brunette hair at the base of my skull, Billy, who was just getting out of the shower, smiles and says "Hey, Elvis." He was making fun of the poof of hair on top of my head. Then he picked up my cheap, $0.98 Suave Maximum Hold Aerosol hairspray (just cheap and strong enough for late days like today) and said, "God. This stuff stinks, huh?" Why yes, it does. Thank you for noticing. His bitchiness, I decided, could be blamed the flu. And, so, my day began.

I sprinted out of the house with my travel mug full of coffee, which I successfully emptied in the twenty minutes it takes to get from my house to the office. And I needed more. So, when I got in, I went to the coffee pot. Now, this is no ordinary coffee pot. It’s a special Keurig coffee maker, which makes coffee on a per-cup basis, with handy little “K-Cups” of coffee grounds. You put the K-Cup in its spot, press a button, and the pre-heated water flows through the punctured cup and into your mug, all fresh and just-for-me. But it can only do that if there’s water in the maker. Which, naturally, there wasn’t. The little red light that says the maker is unwilling to work for you laughed at me, and pointed to the two people in the office (one employee, one guest) who just made their coffee. “Sucka!” it said, and threw its little coffee ground stained head back with laughter. So I filled the damn thing until it beeped at me to say “Whoa! Whoa! I’m full already! God. Slow down.” And then I waited the five minutes it takes to heat it all up. Then I put my special Caramel Vanilla Cream K-Cup in the coffee maker and hit the Make My Effing Coffee Now button and went back to my desk until I heard the whirring stop. Ahhh, my coffee was ready. I pulled the full cup from the tray, delighting in the carmelly goodness wafting from my fresh cup and into my nose. I opened the refrigerator for the Half & Half. Which was, of course, gone. I pulled open the trash can. Ah, yes. Naturally. There it is; It’s empty and has been thrown away. Which, incidentally, was exactly what happened to my cup of coffee. With no powdered creamer available, and me being absolutely, positively, 100% unable to drink coffee without some sort of cream, I had no choice but to let the steaming hot and completely fresh coffee go streaming down the drain.

The trash can which had been emptied of its garbage and bag, but was left without liner, presumably for me to replace, was just another thorn in my side. And that barren paper towel roll delivered the final, fatal blow.

Couple that with the fact that the warm and sunny weather from this morning has deteriorated into cold, windy and overcast and I’m shot. The clock says it’s 1:00, but I’m pretty sure it’s really somewhere closer to 4:30, and Dell is just fucking with me.

I’m ready to go home, curl up with my sick boyfriend and sleep. At least then, I won’t have to replace anything.