All day I’ve been madly hydrating to replenish the buckets of bodily fluid depleted during this past weekend’s backpacking trip. The frenzy of water-drinking seemed on pace with the crazed nature of my day, which involved juggling multiple projects with looming deadlines while everyone else is on vacation or maternity leave. At one point I was composing 6 emails, 2 bug reports, an executive summary for a validity report, and a tutorial script while participating in 2 separate Skype conversations… simultaneously. Better than stress-snacking is stress-water-sipping!
Naturally, the result of all this intense internal moistening was a pressing need to use the restroom. It’s never a good idea to hold your bladder at the office — it puts you in a prone, defenseless state — but the clock was nearing 6pm, I had been in the office since 8:30am, and I desperately wanted some Vitamin D. If I could only finish this email, and that email, and that email, then I could grab my stuff, hit the bathroom on the way out, and flee the office for a solid 14 hours of respite.
Did you know that I type exceptionally well using only my right hand? It’s true! With my right hand, I pounded out a response to a colleague, and with my left hand I organized the mounting piles of paper on my desk. Professional maxim: Never let them see you sweat… or publicly accumulate a passel of paperwork.
Finishing my email, I closed Outlook, grabbed my tiny backpack, waved good-night to a co-worker, and rushed to the restroom. So dire was my need to urinate that I had to restrain myself from physically grasping my loins to obstruct any wayward fluid that might seep past the normally stalwart aperture. That would be a great bit of office gossip, right? “I saw Meredith running around, grabbing her crotch!”
Bursting into the bathroom, I threw my backpack into the sink and gratefully settled onto a toilet, where the relief was palatable and zealous. And as the great voiding tapered off into a tidy stream, I became aware of another gushing happening in my vicinity, a strong flood of fluid emanating forth… my God, was that the faucet? And after I hastily finished my business, I emerged from the stall to find that I had thrown my backpack into the well of a sink with an automatic faucet, and the stream never ceased, soaking the contents of my life in an angry torrent that some invisible force would… indeed, could not relent.
