Frustration

I'm working at home this morning, in order to edit a story I just couldn't focus on at the office. I opened it, edited it - an hour-long process - and closed it before realizing that I'd never hit "save as" on the attachment. So all that work is gone. Searched the hard drive, looked thru temp files and it's still gone. Called work for ideas on searching. Still gone. Called the IT guy in Massachusetts. Still gone.

So here I sit, with snow drifting down outside my window, Rocky asleep on the couch and WFUV streaming through the speakers. I lost the work about an hour ago and have since cruised my blogroll, checked out a few interesting blogs Leah just added to hers, returned a few e-mails and tinkered with the story's opening sentence. Can't get my focus back; all I want to do is futz around, read, take a nap (neither of us is getting lots of sleep these days due to Jelly's new habit of waking up in the middle of the night to pace, grumble and then bark non-stop in the hopes that we'll allow her on the bed, where she snores like a little old man, right next to my ear).

Don't want to work. But work I must. So I'm hoping that allowing myself this explicit diversion will help me get my focus back, so I can cruise thru the edit - after all, I've already thought through all the changes - and head off on the slippery streets to the pet pharmacy to pick up Jelly's cyclosporin eye drops, stop at Wal-Mart for some toiletries, then, grudgingly, go to the office.

The season is officially over, but the sentiment seems appropriate: Bah humbug.