Normally, I’m a big fan of rain. As something of a hermit at times anyways, I appreciate weather that suggests staying inside, although sometimes it’s rather fun getting caught out in the rain, especially if I have the pleasure of some nice company. I like seeing the sky turn all sorts of strange colors, and most times I find the rhythm of the rainfall to be rather soothing. Lately, it’s been pretty dry here as well, so I was rather looking forward to the forecast of rain for the weekend.
Friday night, the storms arrived with a flurry, violent thunder and lightning. Usually, I even enjoy this type of storm, but something about this one felt ominous to me. Maybe I didn’t appreciate losing my power, even though it was only for a moment. This storm was making me nervous.
Saturday morning, I woke up to the sound of raindrops thunking down. I knew right away the sound wasn’t quite right. The water wasn’t dripping onto the ground outside, it was right in my bedroom. As I slowly woke up, I figured I ought to do something. Of course, my brain slowly gave way to it’s natural reaction, which is to freak out.
When confronted with stressful situations, for some reason, my mind races all over the place and essentially comes up with ways to make the situation worse. “Why didn’t I see this coming and take care of it sooner?” “Of course, it’s the weekend now, and no place will be open.” “What about that time you were at homeowner’s association meeting, and everyone talked about having trouble finding roofers?” The panic does me no good, but I just hate feeling helpless and ignorant. I don’t really know the first thing about roofs, which reminds me of all the other home features I don’t know much if anything about, which makes me feel like a pretty crappy homeowner. Then, feeling bad about my abilities around the house makes me feel less manly, which triggers all those sensitivities.
After panicking for a while, I made a partially assed effort to actually call a place and confirm that they were in fact closed. The “internet” spoke of emergency contacts for water damage, but I didn’t think this really qualified as such. Partly, this was my brain’s continued irrationality, where I don’t consider anything involving myself to be a worthy emergency, but also, I felt this was reasonably true. It was a slow constant dripping, but not a full blown gaping deluge.
(Funny aside: my computer baseball game just had a randomly generated rain delay.)
So, after figuring that I’d just try to weather the storm (pun sadly intended) over the weekend, I decided to go back to sleep on the couch. My devious brain took full advantage as I entered the dream state. In my dream, I was driving alone to get lunch and possibly stop by the home depot. However, my eyesight was all blurry, perhaps from some kind of panic attack. Not seeing where I was going, I started to swerve all over the place. Of course, braking wasn’t really an option for some reason. So, dream me was headed straight for a violent collision. Fortunately, I woke up without experiencing the actual crash.
I largely spent the weekend stressing out, but I managed to eek out a somewhat normal routine. I did get my grocery shopping done on Saturday. I spent most of Sunday reading a book. I got up extra early today to put in phone calls to roofers. I’ll probably stay a bit on edge until the work is finished and then even for a bit after that, but I do feel much better now that some progress is being made. The estimators I talked to were nice and I have some hope that things will get done. It isn’t a great situation of course, but it could be a lot worse. I’m fortunate that my monetary situation is a lot better now that it was in 2004 when I had some damage from Hurricane Charley. Sure, I’d rather have the money for other things, but I’ll be ok.
iggysden 