​‘It’s just a bad morning’

Do you ever feel like you ended up in the exact right spot, in the exact right moment to hear exactly what it is you didn’t know you needed to hear?

That was my Wednesday this week.

Tuesday was chock-full of meetings. I had so much to do and what seemed like so little time to get it done. In this business where each day is dictated by deadlines, each moment counts. If someone speaks a few too many words in a meeting, that is a few minutes taken away from my time to get things done.

I tend to get wrapped up in the minutes. Not only because of the constant, impending deadlines, but like most sane people I like to have a few minutes to myself outside of this office.

Add in a sleepless night due to pregnancy aches and pains plus a toothache, and that mixture created a very grumpy Sabrina on Wednesday morning. (Ask my husband. He’s the one who had to listen to me bawl uncontrollably because I was tired at 6:30 a.m. I’m glad he still loves me!)

I had a meeting before my meeting Wednesday morning, which meant those minutes were ticking by that I so desperately watch. But, even though I had about seven minutes to get across town to make it where I needed to be, I decided to stop by a convenience store to grab a drink to prepare for a long morning.

It was that last-minute stop which changed my view for the whole day.

I guess I wasn’t the only one wallowing in my own self-pity that morning, because one of the cashiers was apparently quietly complaining to her co-worker.

A few seconds later, the elder cashier walked past me and said to her younger counterpart, “It’s just a bad morning. Don’t make it a bad day.”

I stopped in my tracks in the middle of a convenience store and let those words sink in. I wasn’t meant to hear them, but they still hit me in a way that turned around my whole day.

I let the seconds tick by without checking my clock, knowing time was slipping away until the start of my meeting.

I shouldn’t have been there in that moment. I’d planned on being much earlier to the meeting, as I’m usually among the first there to prepare to ask questions if needed. I’d stuck around at my earlier meeting to tell one more funny story -- one that had nothing to do with the topic at hand. Plus, I really didn’t need that fountain drink, but in that moment I was craving a root beer.

In that strange twist of events, a women whose name I didn’t even know changed the entire course of my day. Even though the words weren’t meant for me, she was right. Life is good and I was just having a rough morning.

Sabrina is the editor of the Greene County Daily World. She can be reached at sabrinagcdw@gmail.com.