The Butterfly Effect

Last night I deviated from my typical nightly ritual of…well, you know…staying up till all hours, drinking, taking anti/anxiety meds and watching the 5 year old and PAG duke it out. Last night, I thought, hey Grace, why not try something different! And my plan wasn’t just a deviation, it was a complete detour!

I wasn’t feeling well, and left my T session in a pissed off rage – the cliff notes of the session being the typical “I am trying to be consistent for you and I will not promise something I cannot do”….(regarding, of course, the email situation the border keeps going off about). “Grace, I will email you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday – this is what we agreed too. And you can call me until 10pm, you know that.” (Forgetting to add that the phone calls are pretty much limited to 1 day a week – due to her “busy schedule”) And then as I’m walking out of her office, she says, “Oh, it’s Monday, I forgot that I have an all night engagement with a colleague – so I can either email you at 6pm, or email you on Tuesday instead.” It was already 4:30pm. Seriously? So the “consistent” M-W-F thing CAN be modified if it fits YOUR schedule? But if I need you to respond to me on Thursday too f-ing bad! And the best part is this was less than an hour later of the “I am being consistent and will email you on M-W-F” speech. I shit you not!

Of course I left pissed off, slamming the door and then calling from the parking lot to tell her that I was pissed off! Being the “good” DT she is, she offered to call me at 9:30 to “check in” – for 5/10 minutes. SURE! That’d be super! If it isn’t too much of an inconvenience in the middle of your “all night colleague engagement”…she assured me that she could take a “break” and “check-in”. Which BTW, I’m still struggling with the ‘all-night colleague engagement’…do shrinks go to rages and drink and party ‘all night’, OR, was it really a ‘personal BF’ engagement – and she didn’t want to tell me that.

I had to stop at WalGreens on the way home to buy some face powder so my husband wouldn’t know I had been crying. And during the drive home I started to send about 4 emails to DT, one of which had something to do with driving into a tree, but I caught that one before hitting the send button on my blackberry – some voice in the back of my head screaming, "Cool it, Border, she might actually call the authorities. "

In an effort to ward off the demons, and since I wasn’t feeling well anyway, I did not take “more than the recommended dose of medication” and was in bed by 9pm. I called DT and left her a message at 8:45pm, telling her how much I appreciated her offer to ‘check-in’, however, I was going to bed, so it wouldn’t be necessary to interrupt her ‘all night meeting’ because I was planning to be asleep.

Yea me, right? Wrong!

I turned my phone off, crawled into bed, tried to concentrate on my breathing, tossed and turned for about an hour, rearranged my 9 pillows 14 times, took the covers off, put them back on…I swear I was doing the hokey-pokey in the bed as DH slumbered, undisturbed to my right. Then, as I started to doze off (FINALLY!) I had one of those abrupt, “I can’t breathe!” moments and it took a while to calm back down. Then the whole pillow/cover ritual started again. At some point I fell asleep because I woke up a bit after 1am (my usual bed time) because I had to pee. Got up, went to the bathroom, and decided that since my stomach still hurt, I would drink some sprite. In my tired (NOT drunken!) state I hit the glass on a front tooth and chipped my tooth (well, veneer). I have never done that ONCE on a wine glass! Another reason wine is better than soda!

I called my dentist’s office as soon as it opened (it was a small chip – but to me it looked like my entire tooth was missing!) – he was able to graciously *sqeeze me in* between appointments – and $100.00 later, it’s fixed. Now, my dentist is a super nice man, but I hate going to the dentist. I gag brushing my teeth every day, and I don’t like having anyone hands, or any. foreign objects in my mouth as I’m lying in a chair and gagging from the instruments. (Grace, find a happy place!)

And I can’t help but wonder if ANY of the above had been different:
* If DT would have emailed on Monday as she has ‘agreed’ to do

* If I had not gone to bed early
* If I had followed my ‘typical nightly ritual
Would the end result have been different? Which would have been worse~ the fight between pag & the 5 year old, or a chipped tooth and an unscheduled trip to the dentist?

Tonight, I’m going to with option 1...
Anyone care for a glass of wine?

I’m buying!

Oh, I should add one more thing...Being that DT knows me much better than I tend to give her credit for, I had a voicemail wating this morning which she left at 9:30 (our agreed upon time). She said she did get my message and she was hoping that I was getting some rest, but wanted to 'check-in' in case I wasn't.... I'm guessing that was about the time I was 'dancing in the sheets' - as in rearranging the pillows/blankets/myself over and over again - finding no comfortable position.

I think it was because she left the voicemail anyway - after she got my message - that the Border didn't blame her for the tooth thing...