Rui CarmoYesterday (or, technically, today) was (or, rather is) one of those days. It all started when we noticed the kid had a temperature at breakfast, and went quickly downhill from there.
I left home (late), got on a cab, rode half a Km or so and promptly got the passenger door bashed in by a lady who decided to get on the road while looking the other way – it was surreal, for I had plenty of time to raise myself from the seat and shift sideways as her bumper and headlights kept moving forward to intersect my (hitherto quite enjoyable) cab window:
That will teach me not to ride in a cab sponsored by my competition (but the security sticker on the window is ours, so hey, we’re clearly doing the right thing).
Being of a rather stubborn persuasion, I eventually got into another cab, went all the way around town, arrived at the office, staunchly brew myself a cup of tea, sat down and drew up half a dozen pages of legal terms regarding a contract I’ve been working on.
I then proceeded to tour a couple of floors with an actual baseball bat on my shoulder (we got it as merchandising from a games supplier years back), because going up to people’s desks is a whole lot more persuasive than e-mailing them for days on end asking for something – in this case, a network configuration change. And, in this case, a smooth, even tone of voice while casually leaning on a baseball bat got results within the hour.
Once that was done, I resumed my customary occupation of herding cats until it was time to grab a quick lunch, and get back all the way around town to a medical appointment I had scheduled a month before on the clinic down the road.
By which time the kid was worse, although not markedly so, so I went past the pharmacy, dropped off some medicine at home, and proceeded to the clinic, to find that I was stuck there for a good while longer yet.
Amusingly, this was my regular cardiologist appointment, in which he asked me if I “had been successfully avoiding stress lately”. I reasoned that since I had avoided an entire carload of stress that morning, the answer was a resounding yes, and after oohing and aahing and getting prodded, poked and otherwise checked for a pulse, eventually exited the clinic (again by way of the pharmacy) towards home, far too late to go all the way around town again to the office.
I then spent the rest of the afternoon fielding calls and e-mails to and from the various cats, dogs and miscellaneous herbivores involved in the projects I’m dealing with (the most notorious of which had a deadline today), interspersing them with calls to the doctor regarding the kid’s gradual temperature rise, which culminated in us taking him down to the pediatric hospital with 40C fever.
We then spent a most un-amusing two hours there getting past triage with the kid bawling and feverish, while I gradually worked my temper up to the point where I will rather pay through the nose rather than submit myself and my family to the insufferable inefficiency of the Portuguese state medical establishment. The medical staff was stellar, but they cannot give us back those two hours of utter frustration.
I then proceeded to bang my elbow on a rather counter-intuitive glass door at a pharmacy, much to the amusement of whatever nether deity happens to be haunting me these days.
Dinner was, of course, late, although the kid ate heartily (even if in a miserable mood), and we’re now preparing to spend the night watching over him, which is sure to make all our moods miserable before the crack of dawn.
Then again, looking on the bright side, the likelihood of there being another day like this for the next year just has to be pretty much near zero…