And after the day I had…
So, yesterday I sat a colleague’s open house (more on that later) that was so popular it ended up going a full five hours instead of the four it was intended to last. I had eaten a big breakfast, but no lunch, so by the time I pulled into our driveway at home at about 5:30pm, I was famished and exhausted. Jason had the kids ready to go get some dinner, so I went in, changed my (painful) shoes and we hopped in the car.
As we were turning out of our street, my cell phone rang. I sighed and answered, trying to muster a professional, “This is Elizabeth,” from my low blood sugar. It was Brad, the husband side of my Tempe clients. We hadn’t spoken in a few days because everything was proceeding as planned, for once, and no input had been needed.
“Hey Brad, how’s it going?” I said, conversationally.
“Um… not good… I guess you haven’t heard?” he questioned in a tone of voice I’d only heard from him when things had been especially bad. He is usually a very jovial and friendly guy. My stomach dropped and my head immediately started to ache in that very special place reserved just for my Tempe clients and their slippery deals.
“No, I haven’t heard anything. What’s going on?”
“They’re pulling out of the deal, everything’s off,” he said, with just the right touch of desperation.
I almost lost it at that moment. No, OK, I did lose it.
“WHAT?! Who’s pulling out? What are you talking about?!!! No one has called me!!” I could not possibly have been more horrified or destroyed. I was hungry, tired and completely out of ideas for how to make this deal close. I almost started crying.
“Bwahahahahaha! Just kidding!” and the Brad I know and love was back. I could hear the rest of his family cracking up in the background.
Oh man. Suffice it to say that I reminded him that I know both where he currently lives and where he soon will be living and that he should from now on sleep with one eye open.
I decided to interpret it as a positive. If they can be cheerful enough about the catastrophes we’ve been through to joke about it, so can I. Now I just have to figure out how to get them back…