#FirstWorldProblems

I’ve been without hot water for two weeks. I bought a house. My plumber stopped taking my calls. I’m currently writing this sentence in a ceiling-less kitchen. Last Saturday, I visited a park (Ew! Nature!) and was attacked by a giant, woman-eating arachnid with murder in its eight or twelve or thirty-three eyes. Did you know new refrigerators start at $400? My doc is tweaking my medication regime, which makes my poor tummy constantly boil, roil, toil, and trouble. My sorta-in-laws visited. Tomorrow I’m writing a check for $1300 just to have my air vents cleaned. Until last week, I didn’t even know air vents had to be cleaned. My second-oldest cat is costing me several hundred dollars in tooth extractions. I had a hot water repairperson tell me* I was lucky my house didn’t explode. I need a haircut and an auto tune-up. I’m having difficulties composing the first scene of my next book.

Normally, I’m as laid back as they come. Sanguine. Maybe even a little lazy. These past two or three months, though, have been a-bustle with far-too-many mortgage snafus, emergency calls, and plumbing disasters. I’m someone who likes to spend most of her time in her head, smiling distractedly while concocting story ideas and classroom activities. This being constantly present, tending to endless small fires and chatting with way, way too many people on the phone, has kept me locked away from the comfortable, all-encompassing fantasyland inside my noggin.

If this is what it means to be a middle-class, functioning adult, I wanna grab my coloring book and crayons and hide underneath the kitchen table. You know, the one I don’t have. In a kitchen without a ceiling.

I offer this not because I want sympathy. Actually, no; scratch that. Overload me with sympathy and love. I need it. Yeah, I know if this post had hashtags, they would look something like #FirstWorldProblems, #MiddleClassWhining, or #BooHooNoHotWaterfor2WeeksWhen780MillionPeopleLackAccesstoCleanWater. I’m shameless in my literal and figurative bellyaching, I know, but acknowledging I’m better off than 90% of the world really doesn’t really make me feel better. In fact, now I just feel guilty for being overwhelmed. Sigh. Nothing like buying a house and repairing the older one to find oneself locked inside the middle-class, Matrix-esque version of the American Dream, whining about HVAC specialists and convertible water heaters.

OMG, I've become a pod person. Aargh! Quick, let me back in my head so I can escape this kind of uncomfy introspection.

Okay. In spite of all the existential angst, I wrote this post to explain my absence and beg your forgiveness. I have tons of blog ideas and will be knocking out some posts in the near future. In the meantime, please excuse my random bursts of blog.

I got my hot water back this morning, and tomorrow begins the long journey toward rebuilding my kitchen ceiling. Inch by inch, I’m scratching my way back up toward my usual safe, boring existence. In the meantime, and with with mint-smelling hair and freshly depilated legs, I shall contemplate the irony and politics of my new bourgeois existence . #MiddleClassWhining 

* Erroneously. As it turns out, he had no idea what he was talking about. However, he charged me $125.08 for this misinformation as well as such gems as, “You weren’t up to code. I had to disconnect the heater” and “Yeah, it would definitely suck if your house blew up. I’d probably get named in the lawsuit.”