Knackered

I remember years ago, when I was travelling a lot for the bank, I was asked if, due to staffing issues in one region: could I possibly take a normally three-day course, concentrate it down to two & a half days, and run two courses back to back in one week? They’d ask the staff to come in at 8:00 a.m. and stay to 5:30 p.m. each day with a half hour for lunch. And instead of the usual 8 – 12 people per group, could I take 20 for each of the two courses? Could I run the course like that to help with their manpower issues? Um, well . . . when I say “they asked”, what I should say is they told my boss to get it done. So, of course the answer was yes.

I remember on the Friday afternoon/evening, after five 9-hour days of teaching, plus another 2 hours of early morning prep and evening wrap up each day, I was to meet my then boyfriend for dinner. He picked me up at the GO station and said, “where do you want to go?” I just stared at him blankly for about 30 seconds, as he threw out suggestions. Finally he just started driving. We sat down in the restaurant He had picked one of my faves: Lucy’s Seafood in Mississauga, and the waiter gave us menus, then came back for our order. I just sat there staring at the menu, until finally Bill took the menu out of my hands and said, “she’ll have the mussels & fries, and a glass of white wine.” I still remember that sensation, being so tired I couldn’t make a simple decision. (The food helped; I wasn’t a complete zombie the entire evening)

Well, Friday was, as I said quite a day. Yes, I did have about 90 minutes in the middle of the day with nothing to do but read, but that came after getting up at 6 a.m. to finish coordinating, typing, and distributing a newsletter that was due that morning (it was sent out 48 hours late, but what are they going to do about it? They all live 5,000 km away), and was followed by cleaning every last inch of the house for the inspector. Then there was packing the car, all the snafus with the movers, and the unpacking. I had pretty much emptied my fridge of fresh food, and I had thought I’d order take-away for my first night. I realized when the dog nudged me, I had been staring at the three take-away menus in my hands for almost five minutes, just staring. Maybe just go pick up something at Tesco, now that I have a microwave. Put the dog in the car, drove to the store, and headed to the Ready-To-Eat meals. There was a man standing beside me with his kids in a buggy and after about two minutes with neither of us moving, just looking at the choices, he turned to me and said, “This is ridiculous, what does it matter what I choose, the kids won’t eat it anyway.” and he grabbed a frozen pizza and off he went. After another ten minutes of dithering, I ended up leaving the store with a bottle of ginger ale, some crackers, olives, and a packet of cold cuts (and I don’t really like cold cuts).

Not the most celebratory of first meals in my new house. The British word ‘knackered’ really does hit the nail on the head.