2,4,6

The day started with the cell phone ringing in my apartment, Apartment 426. I drowsily reached for my phone. It was 8:20 am. “Hello,” I said sleepily while slowly opening my eyes from my relaxing slumber. “Hi, is this Christine’s Cupcakery? I just wanted to see if you could prepare an order for 4 dozen princess cupcakes to be picked up at 12:30pm today? My little daughter is having her 8th birthday party.” And that, is what begins my chaotic day as a 24 year old working at the bakery I own.

I slowly pulled myself out of bed, stepping onto the frigid hard wood floor of my neatly decorated apartment and picking up my silver locket that I had to open and close exactly 6 times before putting it on. I am OCD, everything I do, I do an even number of times. My apartment is all matching and the kitchen is filled with the most modern cooking and baking appliances there are. And clean. It is very clean. My toes tingled as I walked towards my closet to find something warmer to put on. I opened the closet door, 1,2,3,4 times. It was a foggy, winter day, and all the leaves were starting to create their own blanket for the chilly ground. It was the type of day that I found hard to get to work, but customers were anxious to buy warm pastries for the holiday season, plus everything at my bakery was inexpensive.

As I made my way to my store, I walked out my apartment building, Dreamwood Terrace, and briskly walked down Main Street to where my cute, pink and white striped awning, bakery was located. Well, it use to be cute, when the town was cute. Now, the white has turned to a dirty, yellowish white. When I arrived, I put all my personal belongings in the back room, clicked the lock shut 2 times, and got ready to start baking for the day. I walked to the front of the store, to take the bars that protect my shop at night off the windows. Then, I went up to start putting together orders, and realized that I had left my notebook full of the days orders in my apartment. Just my luck. This really pissed me off and caused me anxiety. Now that I was already behind in my busy day, I power walked back to my apartment to get my notebook, checked 8 times to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything, and then was finally ready to fulfill the requests of my many customers.

After a hard-pressed day at work, I finally closed up shop and began cleaning the store at 6:24. Each night, I cleaned it to where it was almost spotless. The power suddenly went off in the middle of my cleaning at 7:00. “Great,” I thought. “This can’t be happening. There are still two dirty dishes. Just my luck.” Because I could not do any more in the dark, I slowly lugged myself and my stuff home, walking through the quiet, dark streets with a flour covered apron.