Weekday ritual

About once per day at approximately 7am, five days per week, I utter a loud exclamation that contains an effing expletive. Yeah, that one.


No one else hears it since I’m in the car.


But I think I’ve been doing it for a while. I caught myself this morning and wondered why the foul language?


Truth is, maybe I’m not the best driver in the world. The freeway entrance ramp for my route brings me into a heavily traveled junction point where two exit-only lanes are departing for two separate destinations nowhere near the vicinity of my office. So I have about a half mile, in busy traffic, to enter the freeway and move two lanes to the left, dodging cars with more, shall we say, aggressive drivers.


The whole episode transpires in less than 30 seconds, but it scrapes my nerves raw in that short amount of time. And without fail, I unload the tension with some real nice profanity.

Another weekend project

I asked if I could use her cordless drill and she said yes. I had high hopes of completing a little project on my own. I wanted to convert an unadorned vestibule in our home into a photo gallery. I had found some ledges on sale at Target and had plans to use these ledges as the basis of the photo gallery look I was seeking.

The plan seemed easy enough. Theoretically. Still, I was a little apprehensive. After all, I was about to drill some holes in our walls.

I got my supplies together: eyeglasses, snowman pencil, measuring tape, level, manual screwdriver and drill. When Cristy saw the snowman pencil she knew I was serious. She decided to evacuate to a place of relative safety where she would not have to observe my palpable nervousness.

I marked, measured, drilled and successfully hung the first ledge. I replicated the process exactly and hung the second. My confidence soared. Feeling that drill move the anchor into the dry wall was incredible. It felt secure. Why had I been so nervous? I would have this project knocked out in 10 minutes, tops.

Then there was a tiny bump in the road. The fittings for the third shelf didn’t match up with the anchors I had installed. Hmmm. I had done everything exactly like the previous two. I kept hoping for a miracle, trying to get the ledge to fit, badly marring the paint in the process. I was sweating.

I stepped out onto the back porch to admit my power tool deficiencies and solicit advice for proceeding. The first thing she said was: Isn’t hanging shelves fun?

No. It isn’t. I hate the bastards who invented shelves.

Plan B – install two new anchors a half inch over from the previous two. I measured the openings on the rear of the ledge again and verified that the measurement was not identical to the first two ledges. I needed to modify the distance between the anchors.

I don’t know whether it was my escalating panic or just a case of bad luck, but Plan B failed too. On to Plan C – half inch over in the other direction. Triple measure, mark, triple measure. Success.

Five more went up quickly after the setback. The gallery is far from complete, but the visual anchor is in place and the second round of photos will probably go up next weekend.

I need some recovery time.

ENJF

I have to admit that I don’t know what these initials mean exactly, but I do know it has something to do with a personality profile, in the Myers-Briggs vernacular. It’s a label, and humans love to label things, people and places. I attended a presentation today and the speaker touched on the topic of introverts and extraverts. Many people in the room gave an audible acknowledgement that they were intricately aware of this distinction and strongly identified with one of the two personality types.

I was sitting at the front of the room closest to the speaker and had been paying close attention throughout the presentation. She was making eye contact with many people in the room but had not made eye contact with me until this precise moment. She looked at me directly and said: you are the introvert, right?

Uh, well apparently so.

The extroverts in the room voiced their agreement with this hypothesis.

The speaker resumed her presentation, acknowledging that extroverts are often guilty of interrupting others when they are speaking, but don’t much seem to mind when they themselves are interrupted.

I try not to interrupt others. I try to listen and respond as appropriate. Sometimes I find myself waiting, waiting, waiting for a break in the conversation so that I may broach a new subject, ask a question or introduce an idea. I would consider it rude to interrupt a conversation in progress to serve my own needs. But sometimes conversations have their own momentum and the lulls I seek just don’t present themselves. The extrovert speakers keep talking and other extroverts keep interrupting in a swirling cycle.

I was talking with my brother yesterday. He is an extrovert and I hold him in high esteem. But when we talk on the phone it is a difficult experience for me. Yesterday I had wanted to ask him something in particular. But as I was listening to my brother talk, the story he was telling, as is typical, kept getting longer by the minute. Eventually, he had to interrupt himself in order to cut our conversation short and answer a call from a client.

I never got a chance to interrupt him and ask my question.

I know that I am an introvert. I work well in a quiet atmosphere and don’t need to interact with others to keep my creative energy engaged. I prefer to minimize my time in meetings unless they are well structured. I have fun in social situations, but I am never the life of the party. I prefer to take a supporting role.

But this word, introvert, this label, seems to convey other information. As though we introverts seek to limit our interaction with others or hide from the world. Today’s presenter did not use these precise words, but she did paint a picture of introverts in similar broad-brush terms.

And I begin to think that being an introvert, governed by this part of my DNA, inhibits me from living a richer, happier life.

On the other hand, I would not wish to be one of those people who chronically interrupt others when they are speaking or verbally arm-wrestles others for the microphone.

So excuse me while I send my brother an email to ask him my question. It is not the quickest way to get a reply, but at least I can use this strategy to communicate a complete sentence.

Dunce hat

Today is my day to wear the dunce hat. I hate these days, but they drop into my life once in a while.

I had a dentist appointment this morning, but had forgotten the time; I thought it was in the afternoon. Thankfully I scheduled it for 8:30 and still had plenty of time to make it to the appointment after I got to work and checked the calendar. And thankfully, there were no startling discoveries as a result of this appointment that would require another more invasive dental appointment.

I left the dentist's office and returned to my car. As I backed out of the parking space I heard a loud crunching sound. It was the sound of one of those big parking garage pillars bashing in the side of my car. I don’t much care for these pesky pillars in parking garages, for precisely this reason. I have had more than one altercation with them in recent years.

My car is actually fine, as long as I don’t need to use the side-view mirror or open the driver’s side door too awfully far.

Just another reason I don’t need to be driving a big expensive car. Most of my driving mishaps tend to occur when I am backing out of a parking space. Pass me the pointed hat please.

Real life reality - the customer experience episode

There is a cost associated with providing customer service. To stay in business, companies load those costs into the price of the items they sell. To remain profitable, they have to keep operational costs as low as possible. For some companies that have slender profit margins, revving up the volume on customer service is not in the cards. Processes are streamlined and automated. So when problems occur, their customers find that they share a portion of the burden of sorting things out.

Here’s an example, from a recent episode in our own real-life reality series. (who needs television when you've got real life to keep things exciting?)

We purchased a product from an online consumer electronics outfit in early January. We had been watching the price points carefully and selected an optimally priced item, actually an exceptional value. A week or so later we received an email giving us the contact information for the retailer’s delivery services vendor so we could call and coordinate delivery with that firm directly.

Cristy called and selected a delivery date. We have both received a number of shipments to our personal residences through the years, and in our collective experience, freight companies contact the recipient with an estimated delivery window, say a 2-to-4 hour window, so the recipient will actually be at the premises when the shipment arrives. Given this experience, Cristy anticipated that the shipper would call in advance to give her an approximate time, but they did not. They just arrived at the house. Someone was (thankfully) at our house that day and received the product in our stead. It was in a large, bulky box and the delivery person did not have a dolly; they both carried it into the house. But we were dismayed when we arrived home to discover it was the wrong product. And not just a little bit wrong, but really wrong. It was way, way more expensive than the item we purchased.

Cristy called the next day to sort it out. The online retailer had no idea how this mistake might have occurred; they were shocked. Their plan to remedy the situation was to dispatch the delivery company back to our house to retrieve the product and when it had been returned, they would ship the item we ordered.

The next week, we were back on the delivery vendor’s schedule for the pickup. It was one guy, again without a dolly. He did not know what he was supposed to get or who he was supposed to invoice. He man-handled the box out to the truck by himself and drove off without securing the box inside the back of the truck. Cristy watched in complete disbelief, certain that the product would fall over and break as soon as he turned the first corner. Then as if to heighten the drama, she noticed that the strapping around the box had badly cut into our wood floors. The driver had pushed the box directly across the floor without covering it first. Nice.

She called the online retailer again, to notify them of both the damage to our property by their vendor and the incredibly high possibility that the product would be returned to them damaged because of the freight company’s failure to properly secure the cargo within their vehicle. The online retailer suggested that we initiate a discussion with the freight service company to pursue a remedy for the floor scratching.

Over the next couple of weeks, Cristy spoke to no fewer than 5 people at that freight company about the incident. None of them had any idea what to do. It was as if this was the first time in the company’s history that an incident of this sort had occurred. Completely frustrating (for us). Someone finally gave her the telephone number of an insurance company to file a claim. OK.

In the meantime, we received an invoice from the freight company since they had to make a second trip to our house to retrieve the equipment mistakenly delivered. I attempted to resolve that with an email to the online retailer’s customer service group, but it appears that “online customer service” is not actually staffed by humans. All replies appeared to be computer generated and were not oriented toward solving problems. Cristy called someone at the customer service center and received agreement that they would handle the mistaken invoice.

About the same time, our originally ordered product was approaching; we received word that we could again call the freight company to arrange delivery. Cristy called and selected a day, but the day came and went without a call to her. She called again and they said they would get to it the next day. On my way home the following day, Cristy told me that the delivery truck was en route to our house. Thankfully she had called to check, because again, they failed to contact her. They arrived shortly after I got home.

The very nice delivery man informed me that he had instructions not to enter our house, so he would leave the product either in the garage or outside on the front porch. I opted for the front porch. The product was strapped to a small pallet and he moved it from the truck to our porch by see-sawing it back and forth on the corners of the pallet. He opened the packaging to confirm that the product was intact. I signed the receipt form and he left. When Cristy arrived, we carried the item indoors and disposed of the packaging ourselves (except for the pallet – waiting for heavy trash day).

At the end of the episode, we received what we ordered and the online retailer offered us a small cash rebate. We have a badly scratched floor for which we need to buy a rug, the cost of which will not be covered by the cash rebate. And we still need to begin a conversation with the freight company’s insurance carrier to pursue a possible reimbursement for the floor repairs.

As retailers shift their business models to strictly online customer interaction, the cost of doing business also shifts to the consumers. The two companies in question? CircuitCity.com and YRC, Inc. Buyer beware.

Every silver lining has a grey cloud

I attended a personal relationship workshop once and one of the topics addressed resolving conflicts productively. It is such a happy set of circumstances that I sometimes recall these bits of minutiae from years ago because it gives me pause to consider how to process circumstances that trouble me now. As I have gotten older, I’m more at peace with taking my time around suboptimal circumstances. There’s always more to the picture than my view permits, but often, even within my view, there are probably things I don’t see because I fail to look closely enough. Taking extra time helps me focus more clearly.

Often, when faced with a conflict, I am tempted to focus largely on the perceived failings of the other individual in the conflict: the things that they are neglecting to do or say, the things that are inaccurate, unrelated, perhaps even fictitious. I am likely to take personal offense, and unfortunately, adopt a slightly (dare I say it?) rigid attitude as a result. My skills of perception start to shut down as the flashing-red-light-buzzer begins sounding in my head, a warning that conflict is approaching.

Back to the workshop. The relevant lesson is: how many of the perceived failings, of which I am quick to assign to the other party, are also true about me? Probably more than I care to admit.

I’m having a bit of a conflict with my boss at the moment. Actually not so much of a conflict as a falling-out. We are communicating less and less. She is busy-busy-busy. I perceive that her lack of attention to my work indicates that its importance has diminished in her opinion, and even worse, in the opinion of the rest of the organization. She praises the quality of my work but doesn’t read it, doesn’t provide the substantive feedback and direction that I need to make progress in this highly conceptual task.

I am having a difficult time seeing the larger picture since my inclination is to focus on my perceptions of her negligent management skills, where my personal job is concerned. Because, naturally, it's all about me, right?

Is her busy-busy-busy schedule affecting the other staff members that report to her? Well, yes.

Is there anything about my behavior that might be contributing to the circumstances? Well, maybe.

Is there anything that I could be doing that could possibly lead to improvements? Well, probably.

But I don’t know exactly what. Yet. I need to go back and reflect on that question from the workshop.

Whinefest

I admit that I am a wimp and whiner when it comes to electro-mechanical technology. I hate it when things break. It causes my stress level to accelerate into the red zone. And we have had plenty of issues in the past 60 days. To wit:

• Oven
• Garbage disposal
• Garage door
• Ice dispenser
• Furnace
• Lawn sprinklers
• Memory board in pc

And now, my car. O, mother of God, have mercy on my sinful soul, I don’t believe I am fully capable of managing much more! But, of course, there IS more. They just don’t qualify for inclusion on this list because the items are not electro-mechanical. Not technophobe-worthy enough for mention: just your daily garden variety laundry list of aggravations.

Somebody just pour this girl a glass of wine and tell me to quit whining!

Thanks.

I needed that.

Mr. Sandman

I was reading an essay by the lovely and talented blogger over at Gropius vs Eddie the other day on the topic of dreams. These things stay with me, the thoughts tumble and rearrange themselves in the back of my consciousness long after the catalyst, in this case, the blog, introduces the idea. So naturally I’ve been thinking about dreams for the past couple of days.

I tend to think I have an active dream world, but just don’t usually remember them when I awake. I rise around 5am with a predefined morning agenda and the dreams just stay in dreamland. But this morning as I was making coffee and tending to a few casual chores, several of my dreams from last night reemerged in a flash. The colors, the characters, the images, the feelings. It was a tangled mess, as dreams usually are, one situation merging with another seemingly unrelated one.

Some highlights:

• A house with a barricaded stairway leading to an unfinished second floor. No doorway exists to the 2nd floor, but there is a small hole in that wall. Creepy.


• My dogs sneak past the barricade, dash upstairs and squeeze through the hole. I peek up the stairway just in time to see the last one hop through the hole. Stress.


• I’m rummaging through a kitchen drawer and find a dozen or so forgotten paring knives that I need to add to my own kitchen “knife” drawer that is already rather full of knives. Stress.


• I’m walking down a sidewalk and come to a tree with lovely, gauzy, fragrant white blossoms. I feel compelled to lie on the grass beneath the tree and watch the honey bees darting from branch to branch. Relaxing, but creepy.


• I’m walking down a nearby alley, picking my way between puddles in the uneven pavement, and my cell phone rings. It’s a fictitious woman that I met only once, but she’s calling for Cristy, not me. WTF?


• I have meticulously arranged dozens of dinner plates and salad plates in stacks on a table, inside a storage rack that is not at all very stable. It might fall apart at any moment. What was I thinking?


• I’m wearing panties and a little vest and a female police officer is swiping a baby wipe under my arms. Again, WTF?

All I can say is that I am glad I usually don’t remember my dreams. If this is a representative sample of my personal dreamworld, then it is just packed way too full of stressful and unnecessarily puzzling situations.

Borrowing

I just had an interesting conversation with a casual friend about borrowing. It seems that someone he knew only incidentally borrowed an item from him. This was an item whose use is inconsequential to his daily existence, but nonetheless, it is an item of no small value. That was two weeks ago and the borrower has not yet returned the item or contacted the borrowee in any way, even to say thanks.

Borrowing is a funny business. It can lead to suspicions and resentments. I'm certain in my life I have been guilty of discourteous borrowing practices. And I have been on the other side too — generously extending myself and my belongings only to find that the borrowers did not care for my belongings in the way that I would have.

Books are a particularly sticky subject. I love my books, but in all honesty, books are hardly the same thing as a crown jewel. They can be replaced easily. But it bothers me when others ask to borrow my books and then do not return them. Or do return them, but in shabby condition. Doesn’t bother me all that much, but it’s a slight irritation. The converse is also true. It bothers me when other people lend (or give, I’m not sure which) their books to me, without a stated or implied interest on my part to actually read the book. They are books that someone else just thought I should read.

Some I have tried to read and others I have not. My admission here is that I have not returned these books to their owners, partly because the manner in which I received them was not clearly defined, in my mind at least, as a borrow. I may be very guilty of the same types of offenses that offend me. Sticky subject indeed. Perhaps in 2010 I should resolve to steer clear of all manner of borrowing activity, since it appears that I am unable to manage it well.

Gift exchange

I received a good-humored email yesterday from a well-meaning individual, issuing a directive to the recipients on the email distribution to refrain from purchasing holiday gifts for the sender. Even though I don’t appreciate it, I understand. It’s about stress. And codependence. Instead of controlling what is within their own span of control (eliminating unneeded accumulation in the household), the individual attempts to exert control over others by dictating how they must observe their holiday traditions. The acknowledged underlying problem is that there is too much stuff in that house already.

I’ve thought about this rather carefully and have decided to abide by the sender’s wishes with no comment whatsoever. No debate. Going down that path would not prove fruitful and would only fan the flames of temper, serving absolutely no useful purpose. It will be OK for me to simply transfer my holiday gift-giving love elsewhere.

I have a short gift-giving list and have completed most of my shopping over the last few weeks. In years past, I would select an early Saturday morning and dash out to two or three small shops, make my purchases and return home by noon with an entire Santa list fulfilled. It was exhilirating and unknown, a rare once-per-year experience. More recently, online shopping has almost entirely replaced this experience. Excitement replaced with convenience. Sort of droll, wouldn’t you say? Truth be told, I miss my infrequent visits to these special stores.

I also usually have a small list of gift recipients for whom I make something personally. A jar of salsa or loaf of coffee cake. Usually coworkers to whom I want to extend a tiny holiday hug, of sorts. With Christmas approaching more quickly than I realize, and extended vacations beginning well in advance of the 25th, my deadline for homemade gifts will be here quickly.

Today I read a clever essay by inspired blogger, Maureen over at Island Roar about her holiday wish list. With rare exception, I always love the things I buy for others. I admit that it is not the best gift-giving strategy, but that is just the way things seem to turn out. I start with good intentions, but end up buying things that I love, perhaps more so than the gift recipient.

If I were a gift recipient, the things I would love to receive would be any gorgeous antique china dinner plate, a lovely creamer, a spool or two of beautiful ribbon, a simple assortment of linen table runners, cloth napkins of any variety, sparkly vintage jewelry, or flip flops. Maureen’s list was far more insightful and amusing.

Hopefully if my gift recipients are reading, they can begin dropping some not-so-subtle clues about the things from my list they’d prefer not to receive. I’ll try to take that under advisement.

Hypochondria

Most people I have known in my life don’t go to the doctor for every single little thing. You get a cold, you just tough it out. Going to the doctor can be inconvenient and costly and sometimes it becomes a whole exhausting process of lab work and xrays and test results and follow-up appointments and prescriptions.

But about four years ago I got the flu. Influenza. It was awful. I went to the emergency clinic early-early on a Saturday morning because I felt like the pounding headache was going to collapse my brain and I was concerned that my throat might just tear apart if I coughed one more time. They gave me a dose of tamiflu and within 24 hours my symptoms were gone. I was back at work on Monday. That was way better than toughing it out for a week or more.

Then three years ago I had a real emergency involving a blood clot. I wasn’t sure what was happening at the time, but I was experiencing severe pain and knew something was not right. I went to the emergency clinic, again early-early on a Saturday morning. Everything eventually turned out OK, but it was a frightening experience and it impressed upon me the importance of seeking prompt medical attention.

Yesterday after work, I felt so sleepy I decided to rest for a couple of hours. I fell asleep and at some point later awoke to a very sharp, pronounced pain in my lower leg, just above my ankle. Flexing, walking, stretching did not seem to work. Minutes passed. More walking, but still the same sharp pain. It seemed to move, ever so slightly in my lower leg. My mind traveled back to that other emergency related to the blood clot.

I went to find Cristy and told her I thought I might need to go to the emergency room. She started asking what was happening and, just like that, my symptoms started clearing up. She encouraged me to take a couple of Tylenol. By the time I had water glass in hand, the pain was completely gone. What's up with that?

So was it a case of phantom pain? Is this a new-fangled cure for unexplained aches and pains?

Or maybe I am becoming a hypochondriac.

Still life

I have always been partial to still life paintings; scenes from a slice of time in life. A festive buffet table in the midst of a cheerful dinner party, a lonesome bowl of flowers in a dusty, visitor-forsaken parlor, a picnic basket heavy with refreshments waiting on a sunny front porch just before a ride to the country.

It is a mystery to me how these images capture the moment, the essence of human emotion when no human images are present.

I ponder the holiday weekend that just ended and the range of emotions that typically accompany any holiday. This one was no exception. A pinch of stress, heaping helping of happiness, dash of disappointment, cupful of peace. As I get older, I expect stress and disappointment to knock on the door of my holiday; they are annual visitors. I acknowledge their presence and am learning to simply accept that they are there, but not engage with them to a great extent. I have a much better time if I visit with happiness and peace.

On Thursday evening, I viewed the carnage that was formerly my clean kitchen and did my best to tidy up without detaching from the celebration. Dishes, stemware, leftover food loaded into plastic containers, saucepans and kettles in the sink. Contrasted with twinkling tree lights, glowing embers in the fireplace, colorful bowl of apples, bottle of wine on the sideboard. But on Friday morning, with only a small amount of effort, the mess was a distant memory and my kitchen had reemerged from the rubble. Coffee cup, breakfast plate, laptop computer, eyeglasses.

The still lives of the moments of the weekend. The peaceful ending: folded laundry, rumpled blankets, sleeping dogs, cell phones plugged into the wall.

Living in fear

For the first ten to twelve years of my brother’s life, my mom lived with anxiety that symptoms of a debilitating disease would begin to surface and interfere with his ability to function as a normal child.

He was born on Good Friday at 8:05 in the morning. The delivery room number was 805 and my brother weighed 8 pounds 5 ounces. The nurses were all buzzing about this amazing coincidence.

But there was more. His legs were not straight, the bones curved inward so that the bottoms of his feet nearly touched each other. The doctors informed my mother that her baby might have cerebral palsy and there was a chance he would never walk.

I am not sure what sort of advanced medical tests those physicians performed back in March 1964 to arrive at this neurological diagnosis. But it understandably created a layer of concern in the background of my mother’s psyche as she watched her son learn to crawl, talk, feed himself, walk, read and ride a bike. She kept waiting. Waiting for something irregular to occur; something that never happened. Because they were doctors, right? There had to have been a reason for them to share this very serious information.

Before sending her home with her new infant, the hospital applied casts to his legs to encourage the soft baby bones to straighten on their own. They did. But they failed to take away the anxiety and fear that she harbored as she watched him grow.

Mean people suck

I don’t like bullies. And by bully, I don’t mean a big kid who is threatening to beat me up if I don’t hand over my math homework. I’m talking about adults with aggressively strong personalities who communicate in a confrontational tone and manner. These people frighten me and they might as well be threatening to beat me up because that’s exactly how I feel when the conversation is over: like I just got knocked down.

I don’t do well in conflict situations to begin with, and I completely lose my ability to function if I am having a conflict with a bully. It happened today. I had this unfortunate encounter with a woman about 10 to 15 years older than I who owns the lighting store where we recently purchased two chandeliers. Cristy and I hired a man who does electrical contracting work on the side to install all of our light fixtures. It is convenient because he works on the weekend and she and I don’t have to take more time off work to meet him at the house.

The new chandeliers are for the foyer and kitchen. Cristy and our installer went to the store to pick up the boxes this morning and he started installing them. Unfortunately, when he took the foyer lantern out of the box, he walked over to tell me that he had some bad news – the chandelier was broken. He showed me where the problem was and we packed it back up so I could return it.

Later, I took the fixture back and immediately felt a chill spread through the room when I suggested that I’d like to exchange it. I waited for a while with my boxed up lantern and then a while longer when they took it to the “back” for their “guy” to inspect it. The bully, I mean, owner, approached me with a stern look on her face and I felt like I was about to get in trouble. She went on the attack immediately: who was my installer, what was his name, what was the name of his company, was he a licensed electrician? I stammered and tried to explain that he was a qualified electrician, but had another full time job. That was all the fuel she needed. He was incompetent! He twisted up all the wires when he tried to install it! It was going to take their “guy” a couple of days to repair the mess!

This didn’t make sense to me. I told her that my installer merely removed it from the box and did not even attempt to install it because he noticed the flaw. Didn’t matter what I said.

I was instructed to return on Monday or Tuesday to pick it up.

Then she walked away.

I walked out to my car feeling scared and ashamed.

The store called Cristy later in the afternoon to say that the repairs were complete and we could pick it up. I don’t feel good about going. I know, I’m such a wimp. I’ll get it another time. When I’m feeling less diminished. Mean people suck.

Blue

You know some days are just not as great as other days. For the most part I keep a positive outlook, count my blessings and try to complain less. I’m not always successful and am the first to admit that I have plenty of shortcomings. But today is just not a really good day. Yesterday wasn’t either, come to think of it.

Could be the full moon, biorhythms, fatigue, who knows. To make matters worse, I start punishing myself inside my head by replaying unpleasant circumstances from long ago, feeling the shame and humiliation all over again. Let it go, already! What’s up with that?

I feel unbalanced and out of touch with myself, with all other humans on the planet. I’m not about to publish a manifesto describing a new conspiracy theory just yet; no immediate need to call the mental health patrol Just slightly out of step, that’s all. As if my existence is somehow diminished, maybe even inconsequential.

Seems I’ve felt this way before, yes, it does sound familiar now that I’m reading it back to myself. But I’m taking the regular dose of prescribed meds…could be pms…could just be Wednesday.

Balance and perspective

Ever hear that John Lennon song that goes “Nobody told me there’d be days like these?” Today was sort of like that song, but without the UFOs over New York, of course.

It was trash day and I had 3 sets of molded styrofoam packing material from some new ceiling fans. To fit them into trash bags in the most economical way, I had to break them apart. Took a little longer than I thought, but in the end, there were only 3 bags of trash at the curb rather than 5 or 6.

Unfortunately, as I was backing out of the driveway, a gentle gust of wind caught one of the lightweight bags and tossed it just behind my car. I rolled over it breaking apart the bag and watched in shocked dismay as broken bits of styrofoam packing began flying, tumbling down the street. This was certainly not part of my original plan when I was attempting to be conscientious by packing my trash in the most earth-friendly manner as possible, considering the contents were hardly biodegradable.

I quickly parked the car along the street and ran indoors for a new trash bag. Then undertook the task of retrieving as many stray pieces of packing debris as I could locate. Finished, I headed over to the new house to apply the final touches to the chandelier project and start applying grout sealer to the new tile floor.

The silver lining is always better than the dark cloud. The tile floor is understated but very attractive. I had several hours to examine it up close and personal as I was painting liquid sealer into the grout lines. And more progress is being made on the wood floor areas of the house. It is going to be just lovely. The light border edging gives it a mildly informal look. I think exactly the sort of genteel informality that Cristy and I had in mind. I’m quite certain that before too very long, this big empty house covered with dusty footprints, adhesive and layers of plastic will morph into the beautiful home that we catch a glimpse of from time to time in our heads.

Signing the contract

I don’t mean to get off on a rant here, but this particular situation is causing a bit of concern and that concern directly affects my wallet. The home-selling home-buying transaction is driven by a settlement statement that itemizes the transfer of money. The fees itemized are largely understood only by those in the industry. As I browse through this list of numbers, my ignorance of the process makes me unable to determine whether the numbers or accurate or not. But hey, why the concern? These people are professionals, right?

In the past 3 days, I have encountered 2 errors on 2 separate settlement statements. The first error impacted me to the tune of a couple thousand dollars. The title company caught the error just prior to our closing transaction. The second error impacted me by only $250; I caught the error myself. It was one of the few numbers whose meaning I actually understood and I was easily able to determine that it was incorrect. We’re batting 1000 on the incorrect settlement statement preparation average. Doesn’t instill a lot of confidence.

This quality control track record is not exactly wonderful. It gives me pause to consider whether there are other fees charged in my column incorrectly, but just not identified by anyone responsible for double or triple checking? The fact that I don’t buy or sell a house every day makes me nervous enough, but layering on the accounting mistakes I am witnessing in the transaction just magnifies this stress.

For better or worse, it will all be over at 1pm Monday.