too much and never enough

I realize that this title is in use somewhere out there, but this rant/essay will deal ONLY with my feelings and me. Nothing else, in my world I consider others independent NPCs, I don’t need to understand them any more than I have to.

I had something blow up in my face. Specifically, I suddenly became unable to give myself the promised reward for my work earlier in the week. How did that happen? Read on.

I’ve been on a quest to get my house clean and organized. It’s thankless work, but it really needs to be done so trudge on I do. Often, I’ll use little incentives to keep myself going, “Make X progress and you can have a cookie”, and so on. So, motivation being what it is, I said to myself “How could I afford a whole day of inactivity when not sick?” See, I get an hour here and there of downtime, but most days when I can move I work, and when I can’t I rest. There was a new game release coming up.

So, the day comes around, I wake up and the first few hours go according to plan. My wife and I go out to run an errand, and on the way back home run into one of the thunderstorms that our area jokes about being “submarine time”, because it is so wet your car is as much swimming as driving. I get back home, the power is out. So, downtime, I try to make the best of it by cleaning and doing some yard work.

Two hours later;

My wife finds out that our utility company isn’t going to get our power restored until the early AMs, and it is too humid to sleep. So we go over to a friend’s house, and on the way I pick up an accessory so I can try to revive and survive on my old school laptop. We get there, I get about 30 minutes of downtime, and the think won’t take a charge, and windows update is not listening to reason.

Now I am essentially back where I started, but in addition I am sleeping in a house unfamiliar to me with barely 10% of the resources I had at home. I tossed and turned all night. When we finally got up the next day, we went to breakfast at my favorite diner. Things are looking up, or so I think. I checked my phone and power was restored, in a few hours I could be right back on track.

We get home. 30 minutes pass semi normally, and THE INTERNET GOES OUT!! Hahahahgahahaerewkrjfnwekjsnfgviwe!@#U@!@#@#$(*@*@$(@%&@(%& Oh what a lark! Oh lusciously terrible me, what awful thing did I do to deserve this? Did I eat some babies? It feels like that level of slap in the face. 100% seriously; if I had suddenly found myself in jail for a murder I definitely committed, it would have been kinder.

Because that night was RPG time. We use a web tool to chat and keep all of our character data straight, and the ISP won’t be able to have anyone out until the next day. So back we trot to our friend’s house. Where we spend the next 7 hours. This means that at bedtime on the second day, I had spent more time awake in places other than my house, which is unpleasant when unemployed. The outside world costs a lot more than the world I subsist in. Nearly three hours before bedtime, I throw my back out and become constipated. Oh joy, this eternally frustrating time just keeps ringing in the hits don’t it?!

So at this point I have come to the decision I need to buy a cell phone or computer, therefore less vulnerable to the whims of the horrid state I live in. Next day, day three, oh I wish this story would end, but here we go;

I wake up, the internet works, I get about an hour of game time [here is the part that I think things are improving, NO SIR! This is not that kind of story. If any of you were deluding yourself that there was kindness or mercy in my life must know it is devoid of such things.]

I drop my wife off [we have one marginally working car, we have to carpool everywhere], go to the pharmacy, only takes them 15 minutes, I’m having a good day I think ::Why WHY do I ever think this? The day may yet deliver a bitter pill. ::

I run a few other errands, and on my way back, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DAY; traffic jams, construction and obstructions on every major road headed the direction I need to travel. I hit EVERY____RED__________LIGHT, some of them a couple of times. Finally get to my turn, and there are THREE CARS WIDE PARKED BLOCKING THE WAY. I’m thinking I’m getting ready to get wrung out by my wife for something that really POed me too. Nope, she wasn’t ready yet, meaning my entire struggle to be there on time was yet another utterly pointless struggle .

You’d think it would get better here. Well, I deluded myself that way myself. We had a little money, I wanted to see about replacing my phone, which would improve my quality of life substantially. We get there and EVERY PHONE IN OUR PRICE RANGE IS SOLD OUT!!! Then we go to the furniture store, so we can have actual furniture and not sleep on the floor…. AND NONE OF IT IS THE RIGHT SIZE!

We’re out of money, I can’t solve any of my problems, and though I would love to kill myself, I have to keep a lid on it to try and help my wife hold on. This nightmare never ends, and right now all i want to do is wake up, or drop out.