The tantrum

The wind whipped up the trees outside the flat and the sky was full of dark grey clouds brimming with electricity. Finally the long awaited storm to break the heat wave was close. Lightning flashed immediately followed by a loud rumble of thunder suggesting she was in the path of the storm, but no rain came and the air still felt like quick sand. Another crack of thunder echoed around the square, lightning flashed and a few drops rain began to bounce off the pavement. Vee needed a giant storm to wash away the sweat, soaked lethargy but instead it was just a toddler storm, more a tantrum than a storm, all kicking and screaming, all arms and legs but not the power needed to cleanse the town. The rain fell with the venom of a dead snake, while the thunder was more polite applause than deafening claps.

‘Call yourself a bloody storm’  Vee said to no one in particular, ‘you should be ashamed of yourself.’ She was scolding the elements like she might a naughty child. Already the sun was peaking through from behind the clouds and the temperature which had dipped to barely bearable was building to unbearable again.

The heat had made her lazy but this was not the time to be lazy, she had 101 things to do all of them with the deadline of last week. But try as she might she just couldn’t make herself work. She’d hoped the force of the storm she had watched build up all day would revive her, give her energy, reinvigorate her, spark her creativity, but it left her feeling flatter than before, far from giving her energy it seemed to have further sapped it from her.

She looked at the computer, how she hated that burning screen, with three different jobs open on her desktop, all open, all started, all stalled. All of them had Friday as the deadline and today was Thursday. She felt sick, sick with worry, sick with heat, sick with helplessness. There was nothing she could do; the weather, the worry and world-weariness had combined to leave her powerless.

It was time to cyberslack - she checked facebook but nothing new, twitter was full of the usual nonsense, she didn’t dare check her email, there might be more work or worse reminders about these three damn jobs on her desktop.

In the end she steeled herself and opened her mail.

3 new messages, the three that she was dreading - from the three people expecting work on Friday.

But the first one wasn’t the bad news she’d expected.

‘Just thought with a week to go I’d check to see how the report is progressing.’ A week to go? She checked back in her emails, she’d got the deadline wrong, she still had another week.

If the first one had brought a little smile to her face, the second one made it broader.

‘We’re really sorry to let you know but the project has been delayed by two weeks.’

Wow she had two more weeks for the second job.

The third email wasn’t quite as good but did let her know that due to illness they didn’t need her work until Monday.

A cool breeze blew into her window, a smile spread on her face, she opened a can of beer and relaxed. She knew that no problems had been solved but at least they’d been postponed.