Hydrant Day

I used to have a cartoon on my office wall that said "some day's you're the dog and some days you're the hydrant". Before what I refer to as "the 2008 breakage", I prided myself on being made of fairly stern stuff and even if I was being metaphorically pissed on, I could tough it out... Of course now I realise that "stern stuff" was more like a thick layer of glass than a core of steel and it was only a matter of time before someone threw a ball big enough to break it...Now, the foundations are being rebuilt from the bottom up, from good solid stuff, but its all a bit new and there's still enough glass there for breakage to occur from time to time. These are hydrant days and today was one of them, well, to be fair, only a few hours were true hydrant moments, and looking back, I can see how it went from post caramel chew happiness to "its all got a bit much" at a rapidly alarming rate...Firstly, accepting the reality that although I am a Princess, I do not have access to the royal treasury and therefore money has been exceedingly tight for a bloody long time now. This is never a comfortable truth for the fiscally airy fairy "I want it" Libra to swallow.

There are bills and school fees to pay, cupboards to stock and debt to repay, but most worrying of all, I am down to my last scrap of dynamite proof eyeliner and if I can't replace it with a new one shortly, I shall have to revert to the ordinary variety that ends up somewhere between the bridge of your nose and the upper corner of your lips by around 3 in the afternoon. Yes, I hope you are getting a clear picture of the panic I have only just managed to contain in recent weeks. And I have ONLY managed knowing I have finally earnt some money and there is a light at the end of the long dark tunnel, and no it is not the bank manager with a miners light and a pick axe coming to sort us out once and for all. Its a commission payment that (I thought) was due to hit our account in another 10 days and 9 hours and 32 minutes...so imagine finding out that the aussie company that administers such things as commission payments, is not going to give you any of it for another 5 weeks. No wonder they have the Tasman between us and them - it's so when staff over here go postal over the pay system, we can't actually shoot any of them. I feel certain it was for this reason someone came up with the letter bomb...

So yes, a hydrant kinda moment, leaking eyes (thank god for the dynamite proof eyeliner) and a hasty departure from the building before someone sees the leaking eyes. I knew I could sort something out, I just wasn't quite up to it right at that moment... The plan was to get in touch with the steely bits and sort something out on the morrow. But I am blessed with some stella work mates and one went and did what I was incapable of doing at that point - had a conversation (I could do that part ok) without balling (this was where the struggle was) with our equally stella HR lady, who god LOVE her, performed some sort of magic and I am getting paid on Friday. And all of a sudden, I feel like the dog and not the hydrant. Thank the gods for stella workmates and dynamite proof eyeliner, they are both a most wonderful thing.