Dawn of the Dressed

All right, people, I’m ready for you. If you rang the doorbell right now, I would not be forced to peek around the edge of the closed blind at you or pretend I’m not home. If you had come yesterday or the day before, it would have been a different story.

Today I’m presentable, on purpose, after two days of living in sweats and bedroom slippers, working without makeup, fluffing my flat “hair-don’t” in vain, and hoping I would not have to see another human being. I did open the door for the Culligan man, but when you need five bags of salt for the water softener, you don’t put it off.

My last two days were spent reviewing typeset proofs for Mr. Joe, the memoir my brother and I wrote together. We were given only a few days to turn the material around, and the compulsive personality latches right onto that. I finished my review/edit in one long day. Then, that evening, I started nagging Joe to finish his. Yes, I know: annoying.

The book file was in .pdf format, readable with Adobe Reader. I had saved mine many times as I made my comments. On the second morning, my cleaner program wanted to check my computer for malware, which involves a reboot. I had to close all of my files.

Afterward I could not open the book file. Worse, the computer couldn’t even find it. You can imagine my panic, which escalated when I learned that not only was the file inaccessible on the computer; my “cloud” program had not backed it up.

My long day’s work was lost.

The following day I did the only thing I could do: I redid my edits, spending nine hours at the computer in said sweats and bedroom slippers. At the end of it, my brain was fried. I could manage only a blank stare. After two days of sitting in this chair, I was stiff when I stood up to walk. Like a zombie.

It made me think of The Walking Dead. I must have looked like one of them, making my way to the kitchen, fixing the barest of dinners for myself—meat loaf chunks stirred into baked beans--and then spilling it as I attempted to eat in front of the TV. The only good thing I can say is that I did not stumble out into the neighborhood to scare others.

I love my work. I even love being busy, but this week I got behind. I neglected my appearance and felt like a zombie trying to catch up. I guess that’s why they call it a deadline.