Life is good. It’s really, really, really good. I just had one of the best weekends I have had in years…

I just can’t stop smiling.

I had the meltdown of the century.

If nothing else it was memorable and one for the history books.

The highlights can be summarized by a lack of sleep, overstressed and the wrong thing said at the wrong time triggered the opening of the biggest can of worms to be spewed I'm guessing in the history of my company.

With the threat of working onsite over the weekend and knowing I go to all ends to protect my team I was yelled at by the most senior person in my company when I said my team would not work this weekend, myself included. From there the meltdown initiated and emotions ran high. My emotions ran high.

I can't remember everything I specifically said but pretty much every awful thought running through my head over the past year about my company came spewing out. There was no stopping it.

The most memorable line "My current thought in my head is do I leave today or do I leave in a month when I get my bonus? Is this hell worth it for one horrible last month? No. I was ready to leave today.

Luckily I had friends in the room who backed me up and who are in the same boat with me. You just can’t push people like this when the wrong people are being managed.

I mentioned a few times, how could we have ever managed scope when it was made clear to us that we would be fired if we tried? When asked who said that I pointed my finger at asshole saying – HE DID! What did asshole do? He looked down at the ground like the biggest wienie I have ever met.

It’s about maintaining sanity at this point and not money.

What started as a joke...

I'm a busy person - typically during the week my attention is focused in many directions and normally I have people waiting to talk to me or needing me to finish something for them.

That concept has led my team members to take interesting actions to get my attention. What started as a joke has gotten out of control...

One of the senior people in my company needed something from me but so that he could have priority in my attention he brought me poptarts. It's not just that he brought me poptarts, it's how he handed me the poptarts. In a jester that required him to bow, lower his head, hand me the poptarts like a sacrifice and then walk away backwards got my attention (and made many of us laugh). That was around 7:30am and the poptarts made for a great breakfast while I answered his questions and reviewed his documents.

Many people observed my love for poptarts and realized the way to get my attention is through my stomach (which is growing by the second lately).

By noon I had ten sets of poptarts on my desk. By 2pm the vending machines on our floor were cleared of poptarts as they sat on my desk. By 4pm the floors we had access to had no more poptarts. They were in stacks on my desk. All kinds of flavors.
By 6pm people were venturing out of the building to the train station until I said enough.

I have a desk full of poptarts, chocolate, bottles of water and Starbucks. Everyone got their questions answered, documents reviewed and priorities reestablished. I didn't get my work done but the day was so funny to me I just doesn't matter.

I'm done eating poptarts for a while. I handed out the leftovers to the homeless in the train station.

I prefer dealing with mice.

After a nice relaxing ride on my new scooter Saturday I went bouncing up my front stairs to stop dead in my tracks. Where the carpeting peeled back from my concrete stairs was a 4+ foot long bull snake soaking in the warm morning sun.

So I did what all single girls do – I screamed like a girl and ran the opposite direction.

I went running into my minivan hoping to find a phone and a safe haven. I ended up with ripped pants from waste to knee, no phone and no safe haven. Clearly in my eye sight was the snake. He was just enjoying the sunshine and didn’t have any intentions of moving.

Back to my single girl theory and forcing myself to cowboy up, I got out of the car. At the same time my new cleaning lady peaked her head out of my house to verify all was ok. “Everything is fine” I yelled figuring I probably shouldn’t scare off the nice cleaning lady on her first day.

I made a lot of noise to let the snake know that the owner was home and that he was not a welcomed guest.

Then it happened and ever since then I can’t get the Harry Potter-esque image out of my head. The snake decided to leave my front stairs by way of slithering into the crack of my staircase to live (continue living) in my stairs.

Once the snake was safely out of view I forced myself to run into my house. I grabbed my cell phone and called my first line of defense. Unfortunately, I forgot my first line of defense was out of town in California on business but he still answered…

“Dad – help! I have huge snake in my stairs.”

To which he responded –

“Call Animal Control, I’m 2000 miles away.”

Fine, in his defense he was 2000 miles away so for the sake of asking and knowing that he would always back me up, I asked:

“What would you do if you were in town?” I expected him to say I would come running over and relocate (not kill) your awful snake that scared the daylights out of you.

Unfortunately, the answer did not meet my expectations but made me laugh nonetheless, he said:

“I would tell you to call Animal Control. I am scared to death (like you) of snakes and wouldn’t go near it. I hate snakes.”

My hero.

From there I said “Let me talk to mom, she’ll understand (she was so good about the dead mouse in the house only a few months ago)”.

Like a broken record I shouted to my mom about the snake in my stairs and her response was exactly my thoughts:

“I would move out”.

She then went on to comfort me, reminded me I live in the woods (by my choice), that I needed to call animal control and told me I could go stay at their house (or move back in but without the cats).

Onto phone calls to Animal Control in which no one answered – I grabbed the phone book and looked up animal control and called Critter Control. $300 to just come out to the house because it’s Saturday, everything else is extra (snake removal, snake repelliant, inspection of property, etc.).

Long story short and $550 later Critter Control left my house without a snake in hand and an escape path for a one way exit out of my now sealed up front stairs via some kind of contraption.

The snake ended the scooter excitement very quickly but I will post pictures shortly of my new method of relaxation. I love riding my scooter around my neighborhood.