dreaming awake

The Beatles are crooning into my ear right now. Rubber Soul, "My Life." I don't really like the Beatles. Blasphemy?

My office door is closed, my eyes are half-closed, and my ears are stopped up with the sound of Pandora coming from my iPhone. I am closed today, lights off, on internal vacation, zoned out and turned way down. I can't deal today, I can't handle any more.

I do love Pandora. I have four stations, titled Tom Petty, Aimee Mann, Al Green, and Itzhak Perlman. For some reason I'm getting more Aimee and Itzhak type music this morning. I suppose my iPhone is so fancy and high tech it can read my mood and knows that I want to be lulled into calmness and peace this morning rather than jazzed up or rocked awake.

My boss just sent a very rude email to our lawyer calling the contract he made for us unprofessional and embarrassing. I feel my blood pressure rising.

Closing my eyes, drifting off now to a green field with violins and dandelions and a warm breeze...

Emily just came in. She was teasing me about my violin music but then told me a story of a kindergardener she saw once, a little African-American boy with thick glasses and a bowtie, who played a piece from Shindler's List on his violin so beautifully that she cried right there in the school auditorium. I invite her to my field for a little while, and we dance, but then we're pulled back to reality by another email, this time from the annoying marketing director, the ultimate yes-woman, kiss-ass, who is, what else, kissing the boss's ass.

Ear buds back in, Michael Jackson won't stop til he gets enough.

Calculating the time difference between India and the central time zone, trying to plan meetings for when the boss is away. If it's 9 a.m. here it's 7 p.m. there... so that means he could have meetings up until noon our time... right? Who cares, the Cranberries are playing.

I've used up two hours like this today. The new executive assistant still doesn't have her computer set up, a day and two hours into her tenure here. I informed purchasing that she needed one three days ago. Tech is ready and waiting to set her up. But she's chatting with the receptionist, I can hear them echoing in the high-ceilinged ceramic-tiled foyer, so she's fine.

Tom Petty is telling me it's time to move on, time to get going. If only it were that easy.