Monday was a Doozy

Yesterday was one of "those" days, and it totally blind-sided me. I woke up ready for the week.
Then I got to work.

Right out of the gate, I had an early meeting -- one that I was actually excited about (because I'm a nerd and get excited about things like this sometimes). I had a brilliant idea at work and yesterday was the day to hatch my baby -- yay! Ten minutes into a meeting with 20 people, somebody sprung a surprise on me and squashed the whole thing. It threw me off, and should have been a sign of things to come.

The rest of the day at the office spiraled downhill from there. One thing after another.

Now I've got a pretty thick skin -- especially when it comes to work. Calmness is my motto. No panic button in this girl's office. Stress? Rarely.

But for whatever reason, yesterday it got to me. I felt like I'd been hit with a bat, then kicked, my hair pulled, and my teeth knocked out. Honestly, I only have a day like this once every few years. Even my boss said, why don't you just call it a day and start over tomorrow? I wanted to so badly, but my to do list runneth out the door and I would've felt irresponsible if I left.

So I stuck it out and at 5:00, I finally left the office. On the way home I burst into uncontrollable tears. I have no idea why -- it just poured out. Lump in throat, mascara running down face. Who was this girl???

I came home, got in my comfy clothes, fixed dinner, cleaned the kitchen, then sat down to watch some TV.

Now living in the city, you get use to hearing sirens in the distance. Sad to say, but I can tune out just about any kind of noise you can imagine. Until I saw the glare from spinning lights coming through my front window -- and they were coming down our one-way street the wrong way. I knew something was going on and it had to be close, so I decided to peek out the front door.

At the end of my block on the corner (I'm right in the middle of a city block), there was a huge cloud of smoke. Neighbors poured out of their houses, the sounds of sirens grew, the smoke in the street thickened.

The cabinet-maker's shop on the corner had caught on fire, and within 20 minutes the entire block had to be evacuated for this 3-alarm blaze. At some points, the chemicals burning made the smoke in the streets unbearable and I kept going back inside. There were several explosions shooting fireballs into the air and the flames were as fierce as any I've ever seen in person.

The power went out on the block after about 2 hours, and people wandered back to their houses. But all night long, I could smell the smoke and hear the crews continuing their work to make sure the fire was out and everyone would be safe.

Luckily, no one was injured.

Click here to see a picture of the scene on my block last night.

As I laid in my bed trying to fall asleep, I felt ridiculous for having let a bad day at the office get to me.