Read Online Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons by Shelly Mazzanoble - Free Book Online Page B

definitely in a good mood.
    So much so that when someone heated up a disgusting piece of fish in the microwave, causing not just the entire fourth floor to reek like Pike Place Market on a hot August afternoon but my green beans to taste like cheap tuna, I didn’t storm back to my desk to compose a company-wide e-mail demanding a ban on cooking smelly office foods. (Not this time, anyway. They probably still have my letters from the first two times.) I barely flinched when another co-worker came over telling me the project I had allocated time for next week was actually due this week. As in
by the end of the day
, which was in approximately twelve minutes.
    â€œI’m really sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she said. “I just found out myself.”
    Impossible, I thought. She pretty much makes the schedules for these things. Obviously she forgot and now I had to rush to get this taken care of, forsaking a zillion other things on a deadline (not to mention my workout!). But she really did look sorry and I can’t forget the time she baked me homemade banana bread (with Splenda!) for my birthday and helped me lug 3,000 posters to my car and load them into my trunk—
when she was pregnant
!
    â€œIt’s fine,” I told her, much to the surprise of Chris and the delight of HR, who were probably already heading over here. “We’ve all been a tad overworked lately. Besides, I should know by now around when these things are due.”
    She half smiled, as if she were afraid showing any more gratitude would turn my passivity into belligerence and I really would blow the gasket Laura had predicted earlier.
    â€œNow shoo so I can get to work,” I said.
    â€œWeird,” Laura noted. “This whole experiment has made you
weird.
”
    I was still in a good mood when I got home and found a typed note under my door insisting that I do everyone a favor and carpet my floors rather than clomp around like a pack of rhinos.
    I looked at Zelda, my fat, lazy cat who was in the same spot on the sofa where I left her that morning.
    â€œWhat do you do here all day?” I asked her, crumbling the note and tossing it in recycling. Yeah, my neighbor can suck it. If he did hear anything, it happened between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., which are perfectly acceptable times of day to hear your neighbors. The Shelly of Yester-week would take that note downstairs and shove it down the complainer’s piehole.
You’re talking about my cat
, asshat, as she’s the only one home during the day.
    But instead I imagined why he might be home all day with nothing else to do but carp about feline footfalls. Perhaps he recently lost his job and keeps his office skills sharp by typing passive-aggressive notes to his neighbors. Maybe he was home sick with a migraine or worse—brain cancer—and all sounds were amplified. If that’s the case I hate to think what kind of note he left our neighbor with the pewter dolphin wind chimes. Or hey! Maybe he’s a carpet salesman and is really asking me to do everyone a favor and buy some rugs from him. Regardless, I decided to blow off his clearly instigative little bitch-o-gram (made all the more bitchy because it was typed and unsigned; hmm, complaining about the noises above? I have no idea who this could be from).
    It really is easier to make the decision to be happy. I feel more free and lighter than I have in … well … days. I guess there’s truth in that old saying “laugh and the world laughs with you”—or least a few co-workers and possibly your cat.
    â€œIt’s all good,” I told Zelda, petting her head. “Sunshine and laughter.”
    She tried to bite me.
    â€œYou have a lot to learn about Pelor,” I said.
    I was in such a good mood I decided to finally tackle her litter box. I was about one clump away from her expressing her displeasure with the housekeeping services on the area