Time Zone Dyslexia - A Foreign Affair

I have genuine faith in God.

I believe he ever so subtly inserts little mishaps in my life to keep me from getting too cocky about... well anything.

Because it does seem that every time I get over confident and ... comfortable in some aspect of my life, I tend to trip over my feet, dunk headfirst into a murky pond of my own clumsiness, and come up sputtering, humbled and let's be honest, a little amused.

Because after a lifetime of clumsiness and near-miss catastrophes, there really is only one thing you can do after the initial paranoia has faded and the nausea has receded, and that's laugh.

Take for example, my Monday. Things were going fairly well for me. Well, except for Sunday night when I, in a fit of good will and craving, finished frying up some tostadas for some shrimp ceviche I had made and was ready to dish out to my family. The chef's jacket I faithfully wear (even though I have by no means earned it) had been stripped a few minutes before, and so my arms were bare.

Naturally this was about the time my tongs slipped in the sizzling hot oil and I splattered burning drops all over my arm and on my chin, panicking my mother and making me look like a plastic surgery with the bandage over my chin and arms.

So Monday comes around and I'm in pain and my arm is throbbing (with what I will later learn are first and second degree burns) and I'm at work and I develop what I've come to term 'Time Zone Dyslexia'. Meaning, I switched time zones in my head for an extremely important meeting that it was my job to set up. Which I thought I had done admirably and in record time.

I had no idea I had actually switched time zones and instead of a meeting happening three hours behind us, it was actually three hours AHEAD.

Luckily, this was caught a week before the actual meeting, by the other assistant.

But MAN - what kind of moron switches timezones for New York and Los Angeles?

Me, apparently.

I understand London and LA, maybe, but to massively eff up a video conference from LA-NY?!

I blame Time Zone Dyslexia.

And God and his sense of humor.

You know he thought this was friggin' hilarious.

Well, maybe not the burns. Maybe he just thought I needed more character.

Like a burn mark in the form of a perfect circle right in the center of my chin.

Why not, right?