Category Archives: home ownership

Power Loss

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in home ownership, random

≈ 7 Comments

This morning as I was drinking tea, listening to classical music on the radio, and about to open my e-mail on my laptop, the radio suddenly went silent and the internet went down. When I went to investigate, I discovered that I had no power in any outlets. My ceiling lights were still working, so I remained fairly calm, assuming that something had tripped a circuit and I just needed to do a little reset. But flipping the power breakers had zero effect. At this point, my calm began to fray a little. I texted a few people (struggle demands witness, after all) and decided to go to church and figure things out when I got back. I think part of me was hoping the problem would go away if I ignored it for a little while. But the power was out in my garage as well. I know how to disengage the little doohickey so that I can manually open the door, but when I pushed against its heavy solidity, all I managed to do in the zero-traction shoes I was wearing was slide myself back a foot or two. Not in the mood to wrestle with the door and realizing I should probably start making some calls for help, I went back into the house. After searching for some local electricians using the internet on my phone, I left several messages, then proceeded to slide into further agitation. Because now all I could do was wait.

What, oh what, was I to do with myself? I couldn’t watch TV to pass the time. I hate reading and composing e-mails on my phone. Which only left about 25 other options. I could call a friend, I could attack some type of cleaning/organizing task in my house, I could write, and I have enough reading material in my house to last me about the next 20 years. In fact, I frequently bemoan how little time I have to sit and read. So why was I so paralyzed? Because this wasn’t something in my control. Because I hadn’t planned to do those things. Because I felt helpless, and I really really hate feeling helpless. This unpleasant confrontation with just how dependent I am on my electronic devices and internet reminded me of another such encounter from a week ago: namely, forgetting my phone and driving down the freeway realizing that if I got in an accident and ended up in the hospital, I wouldn’t be able to call anyone because I didn’t have anyone’s phone number memorized and could end up suffering alone for days before anyone would figure out where I was and find me (I’m a regular Pollyanna). I made a mental note to myself to do something to remedy that, and this morning is when the note finally resurfaced.

Scrolling through the contacts in my phone, I wrote down several numbers on a little card that I put in the back pocket of my wallet (I will attempt memorization some other time). Then I sat around feeling helpless and frustrated some more, then got upset that I was getting upset. The fruit of this double-upset was a new determination not to be trapped by my circumstances and, wearing different footwear this time, I went back out to the garage, tapped into my anger, and heaved the door open Hulk-style. At this point, one of the electricians called back and said he could be at my house in a couple hours. Hooray! A light at the end of the tunnel! I drove to Trader Joe’s, full of upbeat optimism once again. I navigated the busy aisles like a pro, weaving between distracted shoppers and grabbing items off shelves with systematic efficiency. I even found a checkout line that had just opened up. And then I discovered that I’d left my wallet on my dining room table, full of my emergency contact numbers, as well as all my cash and credit cards. Mortified, I offered to put everything back, which was rejected by the cashier, who said “it’s no problem” for them to do it for me, although the subtext I read was “It’s totally a pain in the ass, lady, but this is what I have to say to customers who are too stupid to bring their wallets with them.”

When I got home, I found that my entire house was now without power. As I walked from room to room trying not to wring my hands and wondering what the heck was going on, it suddenly all turned on–lights, stereo, internet. And a couple minutes later, a giant utility truck from the city went rumbling past my window. Though I am at a loss to explain how my house only lost some of it’s power due to a city power grid/utility issue, it seems that was the problem all along and it was now fixed. I immediately sent word to my friends and family so they could get on with their lives, cancelled my appointment with the electrician, and decided to attempt another trek to Trader Joe’s, this time with my wallet. I confess that I changed my clothes and put my hair in a pony tail, which I could argue was because I wanted to get out of my nice(ish) church clothes and get my hair out of my face, but really I was just hoping that no one at Trader Joe’s would recognize me.

Some take-aways from this morning’s adventures (you know, like you sometimes get in a Sunday sermon):

  1. I am more capable than I give myself credit for. I did everything that any other person who is not an electrician could have done. When my engineer brother who lives on the opposite coast texted me suggestions, they were all things I already knew and had tried. I know where my circuit breakers are and what to do with them. I also know, from past breakdowns in power and mechanics, how to open and close my garage door by myself. With the right shoes, that is. I am also pretty competent at using a phone and calling for help. One of the things that can contribute to my emotional meltdowns when house problems occur is an irrational but weirdly convincing fear that everyone else who lives in a house knows how to handle these things better than I do and that I am not competent enough to live in a house by myself. Which is not true. I’ve been living here for a decade now, and have overseen and dealt with two bathroom renovations, a flooded kitchen, landscaping, a new section of roof installed, and more minor repairs and patches than I can remember. Sure there are people out there with far more capability than I have, but there are also people who have less. And a lot of people who are probably at about the same level. All to say, yes, I can live in a house by myself and not die.
  2. There are some really nice electricians in my area. Besides the one who said he could come out later, two other electricians called me back and, in spite of the fact that my voicemails were left in the desperate tone of someone willing to cash in her retirement savings to get this situation resolved as soon as possible, did their best to help me over the phone so I wouldn’t “have to pay someone to push a button or flip a switch” as one of them put it. Even though their suggestions didn’t work, it was encouraging to realize there are some good guys out there. I am saving their numbers.
  3. All that mumbo jumbo out there about mindset creating reality is kind of true. Okay, very true. The reality is that this morning I was totally fine and I had plenty of useful and enjoyable things I could have done sans outlet power and the internet. Instead, I spent a lot of time dithering, not to mention driving and shopping fruitlessly, because of my emotional state and the fact that my brain could not deal with the unexpectedness of this turn of events. But here is what is also true: even though I knew I was over-reacting and being a ninny, I couldn’t stop. And getting upset with yourself and telling yourself to get a grip and stop getting upset! is about as effective as going to the store without a wallet.
  4. Frustrating and silly situations can turn into writing material. Even though I’ve been writing poetry pretty steadily in the last few months, I haven’t really been able to think of anything to write about here, and I’ve been missing it. While (let’s be honest) there’s not a whole lot of value to this post in and of itself, the fact that this morning’s kerfuffle got me to write something and have fun with it redeems it at least a little.

 

 

Options

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by in home ownership, musings

≈ 2 Comments

After spending the first half of my summer gallivanting through Denmark and Scotland, I returned to Southern California and got down to the business of home maintenance.  Not a fun transition (I may have wept a tiny bit my first morning waking up here instead of some lovely B&B in Scotland), but a necessary one.  Among lots of smaller necessaries that kept my checking account working hard–replacing the water filtration system, fixing my air-conditioner, getting the piano tuned, etc.–the big task of the summer was painting the exterior of my peeling house and rebuilding the rotten fence in the front yard.  Or, rather, hiring someone else to do these tasks for me (more checks!).

Choosing paint colors from the hundreds of options spread before me at Home Depot and Lowes made me think of this article I read a while back in The New York Times, which basically says that while the idea of having many options available is appealing to most people, actually having them can lead to paralysis and/or dissatisfaction: we either make no choice because we’re so overwhelmed, or we make a choice and are haunted by the ghost of what-could-have-been-better.  My approach for the paint colors was the following:

1.  Grab and bring home about 30 color cards to satisfy my American need to feel like I had lots of options (although I will never, ever understand why there are so many shades of white.  Why? WHY?)

2.  Go through all the cards SUPER FAST and immediately gut-discard about two-thirds of the colors (throwing them away in the nasty outside trash can so I wouldn’t be tempted to dig any back out later), thus narrowing my options into a reasonable amount.

3.  Spend the next several days staring at my three color-combo finalists and ask my friends for their input.

Even with all of this, a process more intuitive than systematically planned, the color I (and my friends) thought was the best one turned out to be disappointingly drab and blah in reality.  As in, looking at it made me feel like I might need to go back on Prozac.  So out came the checkbook again, and the entire house was repainted in Option #2.  The one upside is that having seen how bad Option #1 looked, Option #2 seemed pretty great, thus dispelling the ghost of what-could-have-been-better.  Option #2 is the “better,” and I have the cash deficit to prove it.

Paint colors aside, I’ve found myself overwhelmed by all the options I’ve been seeing everywhere.  As I sat at a red light yesterday, I counted six different restaurant/drive-thru food options in one corner shopping center with another three just across the street.  At the next light, there was another slew of options.  It made me think longingly of the little towns I drove through in the Scottish Highlands, which typically had about 2-3 food options.  There were a few days when I’d drive for long stretches and just find one.  Some of the time, the food I’d be served in these places would be really good.  Some of the time, it wasn’t.  But all of the time I was satisfied, because it came down to the bare bones of me being hungry and this place offering food.  I didn’t have the luxury of choosing from multiple options and considering what I was “in the mood for” but I also didn’t have the burden.

Right now, part of my brain is screaming “First world problem!” and there is an awareness of all the people in the world who have no such options and live in the very oppressive reality of being unable to exercise choice over even the most basic things in life.  But as someone who does live in the first world and recognizes the glut of options we have in the U.S. as a potentially unhealthy extreme, I’m wrestling with how to live with a little more balance.  How to block out and simplify some of those options, not out of ingratitude, but more in a way that makes me fully present to and grateful for whatever it is I do choose.

Going for Broke

21 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by in home ownership

≈ 8 Comments

Typically, that expression means putting in all your effort and risking everything you have to achieve something great.  In my case, “going for broke” is in reference to everything in and around my house seeming to break down at the same time and my resulting finances.  It started a couple months ago with me noticing that the wooden patio cover in my back yard was starting to go sideways.  My contractor informed me that the support posts were rotting and the whole thing would have to come down and be re-built at the low low price of $2800.  I took a deep breath, wrote a check, and went on a delightful trip to Europe that I’d been planning (and saving for) for quite some time.

When I got home, I had a brand new and upright patio cover, and in spite of the hit to my savings, I felt quite lucky to have left with a broken one and come home to a new one.  Easy peasy!  Or so I thought.  A couple days later, as I was closing the window in the guest bathroom, I noticed several of what appeared to be ants.  Then I took a closer look and realized they had wings.  The termite guy came out, inspected the entire house, and informed me that I had several infested areas but he could treat all of them for the low low price of $1600.  Another check written, some more deep breaths, and I ventured to think, “Okay, that wasn’t great, but things are good overall, right?”  Wrong.

When I was a small child, my parents planted a bazillion (okay, maybe 30 or so) hibiscus plants around the border of our entire back yard, so about 80 feet of hibiscus bushes line the white brick wall behind them.  For the last three or four years, I have been at war with the white flies that have infested them, and even though I’ve sprayed those parasitic bastards with everything but magic fairy dust (which is not available at Home Depot, apparently), they’ve taken over.  I finally decided last week that it was time to admit defeat.  So all the hibiscus bushes are coming out at the low low price of $600, and it has yet to be determined how much it will cost to replace them with some other, hopefully less-attractive-to-whiteflies plant.

You’d think that would be enough to deal with in one summer, but no, it’s not.  Two days after giving the gardener the go-ahead on the hibiscus removal, my oven died–soot, smoke, weird smell, and a broken heating coil or whatnot at the bottom.  It completely came apart as if to say, “Don’t even try to fix me, lady.”  Yesterday, after stepping into a puddle in my kitchen, I discovered a leak under the sink that’s been soaking into and warping the bottom and side of the cabinet for who-knows-how-long.  So I have a few more calls to make and checks to write.  What’s strange is that I should also have to be doing enough deep breathing to require a paper bag, but instead I’ve entered a strange kind of Zen calm about all of this.  Two or three things going wrong would be just enough for me to feel really stressed, but for some reason when the number climbs this high, it just starts to get ridiculous.  I can’t bother to get upset about everything because there are just too many things at this point and I don’t have the time or energy.  I’m too busy discovering what else has gone wrong and whether there’s enough in my account to avoid bouncing a check.

So what is the lesson here? (it feels like there should be a lesson so that this isn’t just a long whine in paragraph form)  I guess that owning a house is a lot of work and it costs a lot of money.  Which is not news to anyone.  But I suppose as someone who bought her house primarily out of sentimentality and a need for some stability, it kind of is news to me.  I love my house and I bought it because at the time my father was considering selling it, I couldn’t bear the thought of it belonging to someone else–not the house I grew up in, not the house with all the rose bushes my mother planted still in the front yard.  But this summer is teaching me that there might come a day when I’ll actually be more glad than sad to pass it along to someone else.  That as much comfort as it’s brought me in the past decade, I may eventually want to be free of it.  I guess that’s one reason I’m so weirdly calm about how many things need repairing and how rapidly my bank account is being drained–all this brokenness is, in its own strange way, a step towards new possibilities.  Or at least that’s what I’m going with when the next thing breaks.  It beats hyperventilating.

Limits

15 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in home ownership, writing

≈ 5 Comments

I’ve been sitting here, staring at a blank screen and blinking cursor for several minutes now, trying to figure out how and where to start writing this entry.  Partly, it’s because I am near-stupid with fatigue, and partly it’s because I just got a whiff of something vaguely mildew-ish as I was walking down my hallway and I can’t stop thinking about it.  I’ve been getting these faint whiffs on and off for awhile now, and even after thorough investigations that may have involved my crawling on the floor and sniffing the floor and baseboards like a bloodhound, I am unable to find the source of said smell.  It just wafts through the air at random times like some spirit sent to torment me.

A friend has suggested that since my house is on a raised foundation, it could be that water is somehow getting under the house and not draining properly, and this is what’s causing my issue.  This seems a very likely possibility to me.  It also seems like a complicated and expensive one.  I don’t even know who I would call to address this.  So for now I am pretending that this issue doesn’t exist and it will magically resolve itself if I just ignore it enough, which I am successful at about 70% of the time.  Then the whiffs come and I am sent into a tailspin of anxiety and re-tracing my options until I come to the same conclusion that I can’t (or don’t want to) deal with it right now.

Strange smells are not the only thing complicating my writing practice.  In the last month, I have made some small progress in my novel revision and even managed to knock out a couple drafts of poems, but the two words that could best describe my writing practice lately would be “sparse” and “sporadic.”  This is mainly because I started a new school year the last week of August and am back to working 9-hour days.  This might not seem that momentous considering lots of people work 9-hour days, but for me it kind of is because by the time I get home from said workday, I am often a wreck–physically exhausted and usually experiencing a modest to significant amount of pain.  Which means my brain isn’t working so well either.  This is partly because teaching English at a public high school with large classes (typically between 35-40 each) is an extremely time- and energy-consuming job.  But it’s also because of something else that I’ve been doing my best to ignore and pretend doesn’t really affect me.  I have fibromyalgia, and with every passing year–especially the last couple years–it’s become almost impossible to ignore.  The whiffs are getting stronger.

I’ve heard all the same stories everyone else has about writers who have juggled crazy lives, working multiple jobs and/or raising multiple children, all the while carving out time to write at 4:00 in the morning or working late into the night and surviving on 4 hours’ sleep in order to pursue their passion.  The message is, if you want it badly enough, you can make it happen.  This is true in many ways, and because of this mostly true idea, I have been wracked with guilt.  If I really wanted to write regularly, I would make it happen.  Ergo, I must not really want it.  But I do.  It makes me incredibly sad when two or more days go by and I haven’t done any writing/revision.  It’s depressing.  I pine.  And then I clobber myself with the conviction that I must not want it enough or really be serious about writing or I would be making it happen.

But being a good teacher these days (which is also something I have a passion for) uses me up to the point where I come home some evenings so tired that I have to really think about whether it’s worth expending the energy to take the pre-washed lettuce out of the bag and put it into a bowl.  Which leads me to this profound and probably already-obvious-to-everyone-else conclusion: sometimes wanting something isn’t enough.  Sometimes you can truly love and long for something and life circumstances just don’t allow it.

Oddly enough, this is a relief to me.  It means I don’t have to keep feeling horrible about feeling horrible.  It means that instead of trying to strive for some impossible and unachievable perfect balance, in which I am doing all the work necessary to be a good teacher AND to be a good writer AND taking care of my house AND overcoming my physical limitations through sheer force of will, I can have some bad days.  I can start to come to terms with the reality I’m living in and focus on what does work even with my limitations.  What I am able to achieve even though it’s not as much as I might like.  And, most importantly of all, I can truthfully claim that writing is deeply important to me, even if some weeks all I can manage is a half hour on Saturday.

This is hard, because most days I still want to do it all.  But sometimes, I just can’t.

Tile Angst

03 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in home ownership

≈ 2 Comments

Aside from the minor bump at the beginning with the termites, which was resolved fairly quickly and easily (if not cheaply), the bathroom renovation has been going swimmingly.  My contractor, in addition to making steady progress, is a super affable guy who didn’t even get mad at me when, two days in a row, I accidentally locked the bolt he didn’t have a key for and he had to climb in through a window to start work (he now has a bolt key).  Last week I was riding high on a wave of triumph after finding a beautiful mirror that was on clearance AND had a further coupon discount and only required my painting the frame a different color.  Instead of being a drag, that last bit made me even happier, because now I can feel all proud of my craftiness every time I look at that mirror.  With that mirror, I thought I was finally done making all the decisions I needed to with regards to the bathroom.  All my materials had been chosen and everything was ready to just be put in.  Good thing since this is an incredibly stressful and busy time at work and I am already beyond fried.

And then Friday afternoon happened, which is when my contractor called me at work, where I was still stuck grading essays, and informed me that the tiles I had chosen weeks ago for both the shower and floor wouldn’t work.  Apparently, you need things like bullnose edges and quarter rounds for showers (which my contractor didn’t think to tell me when I presented him with my choices a week ago and which I was too ignorant to ask), and the floor tile was completely the wrong size.  Probably because I had accidentally chosen a wall tile.  But whatever.  It wasn’t going to work, and he needed something to start tiling with on Monday.  As a result, yesterday turned into a frantic and frenzied search for tile.  My friend Diana was sweet enough to come with me to a couple of the places and patiently hold up different tiles and say “uh huh” reassuringly when I asked if something looked nice to her.

I struck out with the first three tiles I liked, either because they were out of stock or didn’t come with the requisite pieces, which ratcheted up my frustration and anxiety about 1000%.  Diana went on her way and I went home with two samples that seemed kind of like what I was looking for, but when I got home, it became very clear that they were NOT what I was looking for.  So back into the car and on to Home Depot and Lowes, the only two stores carrying tile in the area open on a Saturday evening.  Come 9:00 last night, I was standing in my bathroom staring at a bunch of tiles laid out and doing my best not to have a breakdown.

I was worried that I wasn’t picking a good tile for the shower, I was worried that I wouldn’t have time to find a good floor tile and everything would be closed on Sunday; add all that to the anxiety I already have about how much money this is all costing me and how many other things on the property I still need to address, and I felt very overwhelmed and very alone, which led to me thinking things like “Why do I own a whole freaking house by myself?!?” and “I’m so stressed, my body is probably releasing tons of cortisol right now and making me store belly fat!” (thank you, some article I read somewhere about that) and “I’m going to die alone and be eaten by wild dogs!” (thank you, Bridget Jones).

The worst is that I got really upset that I was getting so upset.  In the large scheme of things, tile isn’t that major.  We’re not talking life or death here.  The only person affected by this decision is me.  And yet here I was freaking out like some kind of hysterical idiot.  I was failing utterly at being calm, cool, and confident, and I hate failing.

Cut to today and me driving down State College Blvd., which is kind of the tile mecca in Anaheim.  I had my tile from Lowes that I’d picked up last night and actually quite liked when I woke up in the morning, but I still thought I should try a few more places to make sure there wasn’t something better.  The first place I stopped in didn’t have anything I liked with the pieces I needed.  At the second place, the owner (the only person in the store) sneered at my tile samples, then said his store only carried quality tiles and stones and that he didn’t have anything that would suit my needs.  He came out of the store a minute after I did and, while I was starting my car, walked over to his red Ferrari and stroked it.  True story.  And that’s when I said to myself, “Fuck you, buddy–I like my Lowes tile,” and that was that.  Shower tile decided.  The next store had a floor tile that complemented my shower tiles beautifully.  Done and done.  I guess I should be grateful for the sneering guy, because that encounter flipped some kind of switch in me.  Apparently, anger trounces anxiety and makes me decisive.

Hopefully, no new wrinkle will emerge when my contractor arrives tomorrow and sees what I’ve chosen this time.  I can handle a problem in another area, but anything else tile-related at this point just might make me run into traffic.  Hopefully, though, I can grow in my faith that while things might not be perfect or ideal a lot of the time, they do work out.  And I probably will not die alone and be eaten by wild dogs.

Demolition

24 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in family, home ownership

≈ 10 Comments

When I left my house this morning, my master bathroom looked like this:

When I got home this afternoon, it looked like this:

And thus begins the process of renovation, which has already disrupted my life for the past three weeks as I’ve shuttled back and forth numerous times to Home Depot and Lowe’s to pick out and return materials, and which promises to continue disrupting my life for the next three weeks and drain my bank account in completely unanticipated ways.  For example, the removal of the floor revealed that the toilet flange (I learned a new word!) was broken and has been leaking water, as has my shower basin (or whatever you call it–the floor part you stand on), which led to wet wood, which led to a ready-made, easy to chew feast for the subterranean termites who have subsequently infested it.  So now I have a termite guy coming out tomorrow to assess the situation and probably charge me several hundred dollars or more to kill the little buggers.  Added to that will be the cost of the plumber who will install a new non-leaking flange.  I guess this is all better than falling through my floor one day mid-shower because the termites finally ate their way through and caused my bathroom to cave in, but still.

Faced with this unpleasant revelation, I am now in full practical “let’s just get everything fixed and finished” mode, but last night and this morning, I was surprised by how reluctant I was suddenly feeling about having the bathroom torn up.  In retrospect, however, it’s actually not that surprising.  That bathroom held a lot of memories for me.  Growing up, my bedtime seemed to coincide with my mother’s washing her face, and it became a kind of ritual for me to watch her pat her face dry, dab on some violet & rose toner, and lean towards me so I could kiss her goodnight.

Starting in high school and extending through college, quality time in the master bathroom came about when my mother decided part of the economizing she and my father were practicing in order to pay my siblings’ and my college tuition was to make me her hair colorist.  I complained mightily every time, and my mother hissed and scolded me whenever I applied the product too roughly or combed too vigorously, claiming I was trying to pull out all of her hair; but truthfully, we both enjoyed this forced time together of chatting about whatever was going on in our lives.

In the last several months of her life, this bathroom was where I helped my mother wash and change into her nightgown.  It was where I rubbed lotion into her hands and feet.  It was where I combed her hair and did my best to style it to her liking.  She had stopped worrying about coloring it, and it was growing out in a beautiful silver.

Of course there are all those things that people say, like memories last forever and no one can take your memories away.  But the reality is that many of our memories are rooted in physical locations and are triggered by tangible things we see or smell or hear.  So there is a real loss in this demolition.  And yet for the very same reason, there is also the hope and excitement a fresh start brings.

[The Lo Family Beauty Parlor circa 1995.  It’s okay to laugh.]

The Name

28 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by in home ownership, introduction

≈ 5 Comments

Coming up with a name for a blog can be a bit tricky.  It has to be broad enough to cover whatever you might post in the future and yet specific enough to have meaning.  And it can’t have already been taken by someone else.  “Flawed But Functioning” was mainly inspired by a minor epiphany I had about a couple weeks ago.  The context of this epiphany actually began about six years ago, when I bought the house I grew up in from my father.  This was, in large part, an emotion-based decision, which is usually not the best basis for buying a house.  But in my case, there wasn’t really any other reasonable option for maintaining my mental health.  I had just come through a grueling and devastating period of taking care of my mother until she died of cancer, and then taking care of my father who nearly died himself before moving out of state to live near my oldest brother.  I had also overseen the estate sale and watched complete strangers drive off with most of the items I had grown up with–which, when you are a sentimental person like I am, is its own kind of death.

After all of that, I just couldn’t let the house go.  I needed some kind of stratum of continuity in the midst of all that change and loss, and so I bought it.  This made me very happy on an emotional level, but with each passing year, the hard realities of owning an older house (especially one where the previous owners had put off most major repairs and renovations for years–mainly because they were putting four kids through college) are starting to sink in.  With a vengeance.  I’ve already tackled a major roof repair, a bathroom renovation, all new paint (interior) and flooring, having a new water heater installed, termite tenting, and numerous other minor repairs along the way; but the list of major repairs and renovations remains a long and expensive one.  When I did a rough estimation of what it would cost me to do all the things that this house really needs in the next 5-10 years, it ended up equalling a year’s income.

I’ve become reasonably handy over the years, learning to install blinds in the windows, put up shelves, snake the bathroom sink drain, replace the washers in the faucet, and even–in a moment of boldness that surprises me in retrospect–install a new digital thermostat for the central heating and air-conditioning system.  Nevertheless, it feels like something is falling apart around here all the time, like the week recently where my garage roof was leaking buckets and my dishwasher gave up the ghost.  On those types of days, I find myself mired in self-pity, wondering why I don’t have a husband who can take care of these things for me and how I can possibly keep up with everything that needs to be done.  I realize that many of my married friends wonder the same thing, but never mind that.  This is about my own self-pitying moment.

Luckily for me, I have a rather strong streak of pragmatism, which eventually tires of my tragic, hand-wringing side, and in the midst of this lastest slump of defeat, it said, “Calm down.  The house might have problems, but it’s still standing.  It still functions, and you’re fine.”  It didn’t take long for me to realize that this also applies to pretty much every other area of my life.  But all of that was too long to put in a blog title, not to mention URL, so it ended up an abbreviated version of that.  Plus, I like the alliteration.  And that is the story of the name.