It Was A Daniel Powter Kind of Day...

Surely by now, especially if you watch American Idol, you know the song BAD DAY by Daniel Powter? If you haven’t heard it, spend the 99 cents and download it on iTunes because it is the perfect song to play if you have a day like I had today. It’s playing in the background over and over as I type this. Actually, any of these little oddities would have been annoying on their own. All together, they were a bit overwhelming!!

I had a Weight Watcher’s meeting to lead this morning and arrived to discover that our centre had no flip chart paper to write on. Engaging people in discussion is so much easier when you can write down their responses!! I checked with my Regional Manager and she asked me to pick up any paper I could get at Walmart. Luckily, I knew my topic well and I had the van today, so off I went. Neither Zellers nor Walmart sell flip chart paper, but I did manage to buy a big “Dino Doodle Pad” of newsprint paper and get back in time for my meeting.

After this I went over to Shopper’s Drug Mart and bought 2 dozen eggs which were on sale 2/$3.00. A great deal when you consider it isn’t Easter for our girls unless they get to dye some hard boiled eggs. I went to the bank to deposit the Hoffman cheque from February’s sales to discover the dollar was at an all-time high, so the exchange rate was 1.12!!! Not much profit on exchange there anymore.... and that’s what used to let me absorb the higher shipping costs from Canada. I came home around noon and set a dozen to hard boil on the stove when the phone rang and a panicked graphics client proceeded to tell me about an ad they’d been unable to put together by themselves and e-mailed the pieces to me for a rush job! I went down to fire up the computers and make sense of what they were saying, downloaded the e-mails, opened the file that they insisted would “be really easy” and stared in horror at what they had thrown together! This is the problem. I just can’t copy and paste their monstrosity into an ad without needing to fix it (especially the bad english grammar) if it’s going to be a file I send on to a printer somewhere. Of course in all of this chaos, the eggs got totally forgotten until they boiled dry and started to burst, making fairly loud popping sounds that had me racing up from the basement office just before the air could get thick with smoke!

Looking at my watch, I discovered that I had about 10 minutes to scarf something down for lunch before I needed to pick Bethany up at the bus stop. Thank goodness for cereal and milk! Once I picked Bethany up, I went back to Shoppers to buy another 2 dozen eggs to re-boil while I was up in the dining room/ kitchen area helping Bethany with homework. The cashier was the same one who’d served me just hours before and wondered why on Earth I needed more eggs... so of course I had to explain that my house now smelt like burnt eggshell... which set them off so much that they forgot to give me the $17.00 change from the $20.00 I’d given them. Of course, I didn’t discover this until I got home and put the eggs away then went looking for my change! I had to pull out the phone book, call the store and ask them to check if their cash was over by $17.00. They called back about 1/2 hour later to say that yes, indeed it was and that the money would be waiting for me in an envelope near cash #2.

I helped Bethany get her work done then the phone rang and Wichelt wanted to know what new fabrics I might need for any summer releases. I told them about “Santa’s Dragon” that I was working on and we discussed some possible colours, but then I also had to let them know what was going on with the recent round of copyright infringement. They were horrified when I told them that I was thinking of taking a break from designing after my 100th design... but I had to be honest with them about how I feel trying to be creative knowing that I make something that is easy to steal!

After Erin and Bethany’s homework was done, I went down to check e-mail to see if the contact names I needed for an advertorial article that I am writing for the local paper had arrived yet, I found a second and third e-mail from the same client promising the printer that I would adjust a file of cover artwork for them as well... but it is a file that I didn’t create for them!!! Nearing my breaking point, I e-mailed my client back to point out that I would have to recreate the whole file from scratch since that wasn’t a job they’d assigned to me... therefore it wasn’t possible in the 12 hour overnight turnaround they were giving me. It’s hard to tell a well paying client that you can’t do something, but I’m also not responsible for someone else being behind schedule!

Since Nick was down at his school for the Internal Review Process that each school in the District is facing, I drove Erin to Guides with Bethany in tow. We went by the self-store to drop off some leaflets and pick up others. I stood there in the setting sun and stared at a 10 x 10 self-store full of printed leaflets and cardboard shipping containers that I had to have made for dealing with TLC that I now pay almost $150.00 a month to maintain and started to cry. If I had had a match at that point, I would have been roasting marshmallows over a lovely fire!

But now, as I sum up some of this days lunatic events, when the moon isn’t even full for another 2 days, I have to laugh at it all. I still have my health, my family and my sense of humour, even if my passion and my future seem questionable sometimes. What artist ever truly feels secure?? How many dreamers and doodlers even try to make a living from what they do??

Yes, I had a Bad Day. Yes, it felt as if “ the magic is lost, as if my blue skies have turned to grey and my passion has gone away” but this is only 24 hours. My life may feel off-line today, but a day only lasts 24 hours and this particular one shall never come again in my lifetime. The house now smells of scented candles, everyone is asleep except the hamsters and I... and after 20 times through, I can finally put Daniel Powter to rest along with this blog entry.