"You Look Like You Need to Eat Something"

Huh?
Wha?
"You look like you need some water" she said to me.

I stopped in my tracks. Did I look that bad?

photo courtesy of world pics dot com Kosovo

 
Yes, I did misplace my bottle of water 4 hours ago. Okay, I hadn't showered that morning either, so my hair was a little frizzy, and perhaps the makeup I put on had worn off with the sweat as I was unloading boxes and unpacking and tagging. 
 
"You need to eat something too" she said again.
Well, yes I didn't eat any breakfast that morning, and that doughnut hole just gave me sugar rush 2 hours ago. But was it that obvious? 
 
"We have a drinking fountain over there by the men's room, you know."
No, I didn't know that!!! 
 
I have spent the last 2 weeks, almost every day full, moving our business out of its downtown location. My days, each one, for these past 2 weeks has looked something like this:

• get up, coffee, run maybe, clean something in the house, shower, blog, eat - all before 10am
• go in to shop and pack boxes, load car, make phone calls, plan logistics of huge move
• sort loads of inventory, pack more boxes, get through some of the loose ends of moving a business out
• move heavy furniture, supervise movers to move the things I could never help move, argue with movers they can take more, wrap that better, or be careful not to break this as it is 120 years old and curved glass is ridiculously expensive to replace so you can't put anything so close to it, etc.
• take full car and unload in warehouse that I finally found after calling 8 companies to find an empty one.
• go home try to get everyone fed, pass out on couch by 9pm.
• wake up at midnight, go to bed, stay awake for a couple hours thinking about everything that was left to do.
• sleep another couple hours, get up and do it all again.

(Yes, I made the font smaller because the list took up too much room....)

Then, we found a place to set up a small booth to try to sell some of our inventory. So my days turned to setting up our booth and unpacking the boxes that I had just packed. Tagging, creating a new inventory for a new spot, placing everything so it fit and didn't look like we crammed it all in haphazardly.
 
The little exchange regarding my appearance of thirst and hunger happened yesterday, the end of more than 2 full weeks of stressful, sad yet liberating work. I was unpacking some boxes, marking each little item, adding to my new inventory list, and then trying to place in our booth so it still looked nice. 
 

Blue Rage Booth at The Regeneration Station
photo Polaroid style, courtesy of Raige Creations

I had just opened a box full of little, mismatched things I have to unpack, tag, organize, and set out on the shelves. It was suddenly too much for me to tackle- more sorting, tagging, and having to think about how it should all look. I decided that was all I could do for today, closed the box, and dammit I was going home. 
 
I was incredibly thirsty, tired of eating breath mints because that was all I had with me to eat, and ready to just go home. 
 
After learning water was so nearly the entire day, I went over to the drinking fountain the nice lady told me was right here, and I drank for at least a full minute. Non stop. 

My phone rang, I only stopped to say 'hello', and while my daughter talked to me, I drank some more. 
 
"Are you on your way home?" she asked.
I stopped drinking again, said "Yes, after I drink some more water here, I am heading home!"

I was so happy that I had the flexibility to leave a place where I have stuff for sale while the business was still open. I didn't have to stay, greet people, sell. I didn't have to be there until 8pm on a Friday! YAY.

I got to my car, opened the back seat door to put my bag in, and guess what I saw. 

My water bottle.

photo courtesy of  Livid Ambition

I had left it there when I took my bag out, 6 hours earlier. I drank the entire 24 ounce bottle on my way home.

Lesson: Don't run yourself so ragged that you deprive yourself of something that was there the whole time and you were just too ragged to remember where you left it.