It's taken me only sixteen years (and one month and three days) to figure out that I really like my job. Why else would I be working, cheerfully and voluntarily, on Labor Day? I like everything about my job except for the constant phone calls and the ever-looming crises and the uncertain future and the deadlines and the subpoenas and the crowded tunnels and the flying monkeys and the shattered illusions.

Oh, wait. Something went horribly wrong about halfway through my list of petty grievances.

Working today was actually a pleasure, because there were no flying monkeys or any of those other things. There were spreadsheets, and I love working on spreadsheets. There was a letter to edit, and I love editing other people's writing and making it sound more like them than they know how to do for themselves. Any day I can cross items off a to-do list is a good day.

Today I even had the opportunity to leave a snarky message on Tim's voice mail, and don't think I didn't enjoy that. It was his letter that I was typing, and after I polished up the last revision and emailed it back to him, I thought we were done. Later on he sent it back again, telling me he'd made a few more changes and asking what I thought.

I started revising and editing, and before I'd hacked my way out of the first paragraph I realized that I was making the same corrections I'd made earlier in the day. I read on, and every misuse of punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure that I'd fixed was back like an old bruise. I was dumbstruck, but not for long. I picked up the phone and gave him a piece of my mind.

Actually, it wasn't what I said (which was pretty much what I said above, that he'd sent me an old version of the letter and I needed to know what changes he wanted) as the way I said it. I managed to work myself into a fair lather. I don't raise my voice much, but I can be forceful when I'm speaking from a position of strength.

If he wants my help (on a holiday, at seven in the evening), he's going to have to pay attention to the help I give him. Whatever you do, don't take me for granted. That doesn't sit well.

He didn't call back, but he sent me another final version based on my own last revision. I congratulated him on a job well done. I think we'll just let it go at that for now. I probably won't forget that I was working on his final draft at nine o'clock at night on a holiday.

I didn't just work today. I sat out on the porch and read for awhile (until the hornets came). It was a little too hot to do any serious gardening, but I watered all the dead plants, with the hope that some of them might come back to life between now and spring. I paid a visit to Mom, who is improving a little each day, as long as she remembers to take her pills at the right time. I even watched a little baseball. All in all, it was a fine holiday. And now we get a short week, as a kind of bonus prize.