[nixon always loses]

Have you ever had just a really long week? You know one of those where you reach the end of it and your brain just quits on you?

I’m totally having one of those right now. Which is bad because I have like 4 hours of torts to learn tonight. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

The week started out with a bang. I spent all Sunday hoping and praying that the rain would keep falling so that everything would ice over and I wouldn’t be able to go in on Monday. No such luck. While the kids got a day off school on Tuesday because it was too cold outside for them to ride unheated buses (back off—this is Georgia and we don’t do cold very well. Seriously. We have like 2 snowplows for the whole city.), I had to work both Monday and Tuesday. Well, part of Monday anyways. More on that in a second.

Monday morning I got all ready for work and hopped in my car. I stuck the key in the ignition and attempted to turn it. It wouldn’t turn. Back in the house I went after administering a swift kick to the tire. As a side note—don’t kick tires. It hurts a lot. After much confusion it was finally settled that I would just take Mom’s car. So off I set in Mom’s car. I got to work on time and settled in for my day.

Around 8 a strange thought popped into my brain. I’m going to throw up, my brain said. I told my brain not to be silly: I felt totally fine so why would I throw up? Sure enough, 50 minutes later I was in the bathroom. Throwing up. I felt well enough to go back to work but decided that as a general rule it’s not a good idea to stay at work after throwing up. I don’t know why but it just seems like if you’re going to do something that extreme, it’s probably time to go home. So I told my manager who promptly told me to stay out of her office because she didn’t want to get sick and to put it through as PTO time when I came back on Tuesday.

Thankfully the week got better from there. Tuesday was crazy cold thanks to the polar vortex vortexing the ever living daylights out of us. Naturally my response was to layer up like the kid in a Christmas Story and head into the office. By Thursday I was back to running over my lunch breaks, mostly because it was a balmy 40 outside.

Thursday I also revealed to my entire office exactly what goes on inside my head all day. You see I take notes for our bi-weekly team meetings, type them up, and send them out on Thursday mornings. Since I thought nobody read the emails, I didn’t try and keep them all professional and buttoned up. I editorialized a lil’ bit. Then I got an email from my manager that said this:

“First and foremost, thank you Courtney for taking notes every week during our team huddles.  She is doing a great job and even puts a humorous spin on some of the wonderful bits of information that need to be conveyed.”

Sweet baby Jesus now the whole office nows I’m bonkers. After that email went out I got a flood of emails and comments saying thanks for the notes. Now I feel all pressured to keep up the entertainment value of the weekly notes.

Now it’s finally Friday and I’m starting to feel like Nixon in a bar exam question. For those who haven’t taken/studied for the Bar here’s a free bar exam tip: Nixon always loses. It doesn’t matter what the question is, Nixon will lose a Constitutional Law fight every time. This afternoon I was verifying the distance between Seattle and Portland. While I was at it, I decided to explore the geography of the Pacific Northwest a little bit because my knowledge of it is limited to what I see on shows like Grimm and Portlandia. Oh also I know that coffee + rain = Seattle. And it looks pretty out there. Anyways.

I was scrolling around the map, figuring out where places like Spokane are (the answer is nowhere near Seattle. I don’t know why but for some reason I thought they were closer together). Suddenly I became quite alarmed: I couldn’t find the Oregon-Washington border. It just wasn’t there. Finally I found a part of it and starting tracing it. Then I lost it in a tangle of highways leading into Portland which caused me to draw the highly logical conclusion that the state line bisected Portland. For several minutes I went into a panic that sounded something like this:

PORTLAND IS IN OREGON AND WASHINGTON STATE. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THAT? HOW DID NEITHER OF THE TWO SHOWS THAT FEATURE PORTLAND THAT I WATCHED MENTION THAT? OH MY GOD POOR PORTLAND! I MEAN YOUR FRIEND COULD LIVE IN WASHINGTON AND YOU COULD LIVE IN OREGON BUT YOU’D LIVE IN THE SAME CITY. I CAN’T EVEN BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THAT.

Wanna know something? Portland is not in two states. It’s not. It’s on one state: Oregon. The border is north of the city. I mean, it’s even north of the outer limits of the Portland suburbs. How I could be so off is baffling. But I was. I was convinced, heart and soul, that Portland was in two states at the same time.

It’s been that type of week kids. I think tonight I’ll have a cocktail with dinner. Or maybe just a glass of wine.

You know what? A glass of wine is probably a better idea. I don’t need any more help getting confused than I already am.