Today didn’t start out the best. It began when I woke up at 2:00 a.m. with a weird gut feeling in my stomach. I had fallen asleep all too early the night before, and missed my nightly Skype chat with KH, so I thought that was it and I felt pretty crummy but figure I’ll just text her and apologize, in anticipation of tonight. I look at my phone and it’s dead. Great. I look over at Charlotte, sleeping right next to me, and she’s awake for some reason. Weird. Usually Char wakes up in the same position she fell asleep in. I figure she’s probably not too sleepy since I had fallen asleep well before 7:00 p.m. the night before. She suddenly hops down out of bed and promptly throws up on the floor – just narrowly missing my bed. I knew something was off.
I hop out of bed and begin to pet Charlotte and try to figure out what’s wrong. She keeps heaving, but it’s more of this nervous breathing thing that she does from time to time that the vet said is completely normal, and happens almost weekly (when she’s excited is a big factor). I bring her downstairs to go outside and use the bathroom and she promptly does both numbers, and then we come in and she gets some water. She starts to act a little more normal, but guzzles down the whole cup so I give her another. We go upstairs, I clean the vomit out of my carpet, and watch TV until I fall asleep. I set my alarm for 5:00.
Of course, I oversleep my alarm. I hop out of bed, but with less urgency than the night before, and start getting ready for the day. It looks like I’m just barely going to make it to my desired train on team – the day is looking up just a little bit. But then, as soon as I make a move to let Charlotte out of my room and go get her leash so we can go outside, she’s already peeing. Inside. On the floor. I’m not THAT mad because she drank so much water the night before and this means her bowels are still passing normally – so that’s great. But now it’s going to take me a few minutes to clean this up.
I clean it up, and toss her in her crate with a firm “bad girl.” I quickly run out of the house, turning the lights out, grabbing my dress shoes, car keys and cell phone. I make it to the car and am thankful that it doesn’t seem as if I have forgotten anything. Thank the good Lord. I pull into the train station, and the train’s already here – it’s a few moments early and I’m a few moments late.
I jump out of my truck, lock it, and begin to sprint down the steep ramp to the train platform. As I come around the turn, I’m hopeful – I think the conductor saw me. The train slowly pulls off as soon as I get to the ticket validating machine. Just. My. Luck. Missed it by about 10 seconds.
I consider going back up to my car but that ramp is no joke. It’s very long, very steep, and my wheels at this point were very cold. I decided to bundle up with my pea coat, scarf, and hat, and wait patiently forty minutes for the next train to come. As I wait, a young lady comes strolling down the steps to the platform.
“You missed it too, huh?” she says.
We spend the next forty minutes getting to know each other. I learned all about her daughter who is in high school, she learned about me working the same job for five years and this one being one of the most enjoyable terms yet. I didn’t get to know her that well but it was nice to have someone to pass the time with. She told me about her job at Sentara hospital in Woodbridge and I told her about my favorite place in the world: Virginia Tech. It was interesting but helped the time go by much faster. After such a positive new encounter, my day is looking up.
So I hop on the next train, and the commute that normally takes about 60 minutes turns into 90. The train had to stop numerous times along its route because of signals they were getting from those that run the railroads. So. Frustrating. Can’t you have mix ups like this, you know, outside of rush hour? I think I was most annoyed with myself and with Charlotte for being the reasons that I missed the earlier train in the first place. Officially an hour behind schedule.
I get to work and I promptly begin to work on what I wanted to accomplish that day. It was a task but I finally felt I was a little ahead by lunch time. So I decided to treat myself to a nice lunch (blog post to come on Fire & Rice Food Truck). As I walk outside to head to the food truck court, as I like to call it, I run into an old coworker who no longer works with my company anymore. He calls my name out as I go down the ramp and I promptly turn around to greet him.
We re-acclimate a little bit, he catches me up on his life and he catches me up on his, and I begin to make moves to head toward lunch but then he floors me with a fact. He goes on to explain that he has been keeping tabs on me via Facebook, which I’m honored by, but he continues to explain that he has been going through a tough personal situation lately, and that I’ve been an inspiration to him. He talks about how he will log into Facebook and he’ll see inspiratoinal posts via Actively Caring or from a positive attitude I had on a particular day, and that that helps him keep on trucking along.
That just goes to show that you never know how one interactio nwith someone has the power to make their day. He certainly made mine. And it didn’t stop there.
I got lunch and then I returned to the office and an EA (executive assitant) in the office comes to talk with me.
Justin, are you working tomorrow in the office?
Nope, I was planning to telework from home tomorrow. What’s up, can I help you out with anything if I’m not here?
Well that means I am going to be working in here all by myself! Everyone is either on leave or teleworking!
I’m sorry! I’ll be back in on Monday, though! Make sure you hold down the fort for us. :)
Some moments later…
You know I think we leave the office around the same time. Saw you on the platform this week and yelled out but I don’t think you heard me. But anyways, keep in mind the VRE doesn’t run on Monday…
WOW thanks for letting me know. Otherwise I would have been waiting for the train and very upset that it wasn’t running on Monday morning. Guess I’ll telework on Monday then, too…
No problem. When’s your last day for the term before you head back to school?
Probably the 11th or 18th.
Oh, well…I’m having surgery in a few days. I’ve already brought my monthly pass for the VRE for the month of January though and it’s mostly going to go to waste. Your last day is just before I come back. Do you want to borrow my VRE Ticket?
I would love to! That’ll save me about $100 so I won’t have to buy a new one. I just bought a ten trip but it doesn’t expire for another year! Thanks!
And you can guess what I did next. I shared with her an Actively Caring for People wristband and shared with the mission of the movement. She goes on to tell me about how she does things like this all the time, she just likes to help out people. I think we need so many more people like this in the world.
Truth be told, it would have been so much easier for her to hold onto the ticket. You know, peace of mind that she’ll be able to get back to work when she’s all recovered. But…nope. Out of the kindness of her heart, she’s saving me more than one hundred dollars just by tasking me with being responsible for not losing this very expensive little piece of paper. I had also just finished telling her about how the most convenient shop that used to sell VRE Tickets doesn’t anymore. You can only buy accessible ones from certain places. Now, i don’t have to worry about going through that process either.
So thankful. It just goes to show that you never know how the smallest interaction with someone has the ability to make their day.
Needless to say, after she left my office the first thing I did was put an appointment on both my work and personal calendars to NOT forget to leave the ticket on her desk before I leave on my last day. :)
Now if I get home this evening and my dog isn’t as cranky and feeling bad as she was this morning…my day will be complete. :) If she is…my dinner plans will be delayed and I’ll get to hang out with my sick puppy at the vet. We’ll see!