This Was Supposed To Be A Movie Review…

…but my plans for the weekend veered off course from my week long anticipated attendance at a local theater showing SPECTRE. My original plan for the day included doing overtime to get caught up on the job, then the movie and an after movie dinner at a southwest grill chain. (Warrior Queen was otherwise engaged in a lunch date with one of her Internet knitting friends.) 

 

Unfortunately, it is the hectic time of year at my job when hundreds of our clients and thousands of their employees are going through the annual ritual of open enrollment. My company handles the questions of these employees as they choose their health insurance coverage for the next year. Medicare recipients also have to enroll or re-enroll if they are changing their coverage to a different plan type (for example, traditional Medicare to a Medicare HMO).  

The combined schedule of these open enrollment periods brings a tsunami of phone calls which results in bedlam, chaos, and frequent periods of self-loathing. The end result of this intense concentration of communication will be that each one of us will be weeks behind in our work. This subsequently brings on stress to catch up which can last for months. It took me six months to get caught up after the last time I had to take open enrollment calls.

The pressures of this week caught up to me after my shift on Saturday. I wasn’t feeling up to a movie and simply went home.

Sorry, Mr. Bond, but I have a headache.

Just as well; I doubt that my condition could withstand the aural assault of an action film with car chase squealing rubber, crunching of colliding metal, lots of explosions of various items and locations, punctuated once or twice by the sounds of a female experiencing an orgasm as she is seduced/serviced by the main character…all in Dolby®, THX®, or Surround® sound, or whatever the current sound technology exists at this time. So now you know how often I go to the movies, since I don’t even know the name of the current innovative technology.

It was a hectic week and the next few weeks promise more of the same. And in the middle of this first week of the month we had elections for local offices. It was here that I had a day long period of dread: I thought I had voted for the wrong party.

This was the first election in which I’ve participated since my eye surgery in the spring. Ever since, I’ve had wonderful far range vision, but I have required the use of glasses to see anything within 18 inches. I do not carry these readers everywhere with me. I have several pairs at home in various points where I know I will most likely use them:  the computer station, the dining room table where I sort my mail, and usually on a table next to my La-z-Boy®. I also keep a pair at work so I don’t have to worry that I have a pair on me when I leave for work every morning.

I know how my mind works, and as my Dad always said (and since his passing, Warrior Queen has been more than happy to remind me), “You’re lucky to have your head fastened on!” Otherwise, I might forget to take that with me.

So Election Day came and I reported to do my civic duty at the polls, when I realized I needed my glasses to differentiate between the columns listing the candidates for each party. Guess what I didn’t have? I panicked momentarily, believing that I could figure out which column was marked “D” (the good people) and which column was marked “R” (insert endless barrage of abusive terms for the GOP here). I pressed all the buttons in the first column, pressed the VOTE button, and for the rest of the day wondered if I did it correctly.

I related my voting travails to Warrior Queen that night, and she convinced me that I had voted for the “other party”. (Cue Shakespearean strike of lightning and dramatic roll of thunder.)  I was horrified at the thought that I had voted for the Republican candidates.

I kept going over the events of my voting in my mind, and wondered over and over how I could have done such a thing. How could I recover from this political slight to my psyche? What would my cats think of me? More importantly, how could I ever look The Huffington Post in the face ever again?

Hand wringing, clenched fist held to the forehead and other demonstrable gestures of melodramatic agony and distressed ensued. I went to bed that night resigned to the fact that I might have to do some sort of penance by watching Fox News - and only Fox News - every day for the rest of my life.

After a fitful night’s sleep, Warrior Queen explained that she thought about the arrangement of the political parties on the polling booth screen and realized that the first column was, indeed, the listing for the Democrats. I was relieved at her news. The dread that had appeared when I thought I had upset the balance of power in my little corner of the world gave way to happy thoughts of absolution and redemption.

In other words, “Whew! That was close!”

(Thank you for reading. SPECTRE will be reviewed…soon.)