1.3 Organization Lessons.

I think a lot these days about the classic "life flashes before your eyes" paradigm that supposedly occurs when you're about to die, and I can't help but wonder if this doesn't apply to states of utter catastrophe as well.  Case in point, that little voice in the back of your head that starts to outline all the decisions that lead you up to the point of ruin, degradation and decimation.  In my case, the voice is narrated by a senior acquisitions editor at my publishing firm.  "Cause and effect, Carly," he so often quips when I'm fielding books in the slush pile, albeit a little too early in the morning.  And with majorly heinous coffee breath.  "Look for the cause and effect."

I'm never quite sure what he means, but I always smile and nod and hold my breath until he's gone.

The morning before the night that changed my life forever, he said just such a thing in a smelly, sage-like voice.  Kate, one of the office assistants, and my second closest friend next to Tom, just happened to be in the office kitchen heating her lunch when he was baraging me with this wisdom.  Thankfully, she offered us both some gum with the stealth of a spearmint sworded ninja.

"So what's the plan?" she asked eagerly once he'd left, clearly buzzed from her morning frappaccino.  "You sure you don't want me to go to the florist for you?"

She was referring to the last time I bought cut flowers and learned that I'm terribly allergic to certain varieties of daisies.  Also, as I mentioned, I'm clumsy.  All those expensive porcelain vases carrying a deadly triage of daisies on precarious columns did nothing to soothe my credit card debt that summer.  At least not when the angry store manager was demanding retribution and I was lying on the floor in front of him, sneezing with the remains of a Burmese orchid and dirt in my hair.

"Nope, I ordered on their website.  It's being delivered to my house this afternoon so he doesn't suspect anything."

"Dinner reservations?" she asked.

"La Bonne Nourriture.  Eight thirty.  On the back patio facing the river.  I made sure."

"Classy.  Condoms?"

At that I laughed.  When she wants to be, Kate is about as subtle as an elephant.  "Got it covered."

She offered a kind "uh huh" and went back to her desk.  Sometimes it's good to have friends who are more organized than you are.  They think of everything.