I'm Just a Girl

Since Glenn and I said the "D" word, I've actually been feeling surprisingly all right, and let me tell you, that is all wrong. I am not, and never have been, the all right type; what I always have been, and what I probably always will be, is the freak-out-and-panic-as-if-the-sky-is-falling-down type, which is why this all right thing feels so odd and why the episode I experienced on Wednesday night was pretty much inevitable. I knew an episode was coming. I just didn't know when.

First of all, let me just start by saying that I hate Wednesdays. Wednesdays are night school days, and I can think of about twenty-seven million things I'd rather do than teach it (say like projectile vomit or lose a limb (not a big one, though. A little one. Like maybe a finger)). Not only does teaching night school suck just because of the suckiness of it, but by the time the night is over, I'm exhausted. I leave for work before seven in the morning and don't get home until about ten at night, and as if that's not bad enough, I now have to spend the hour and fifty minutes between day school and night school driving home from Miramar to Davie to walk my dogs because Glenn refuses to do it. I'm telling you, if ever a suckfest there was, Wednesdays are it.

As if Wednesdays aren't bad enough already, this Wednesday between day school and night school I talked to my lawyer and found out that I'm most likely going to have to pay child support, which is obviously the opposite of good news since I'm barely going to be able to afford to live without paying child support, so by the time ten o'clock rolled around and I got home, I wanted nothing more than to just walk my dogs, brush my teeth, wash my face, get in bed, and be miserable. Things did not go as planned.

Really, do they ever? Ever?

The Fan Incident

The light in my bedroom is one of those lamp/fan combos, and the only way to turn it on and off is to pull a little gold chain. It actually has two separate parts--the main lamp, which consists of three bulbs in three separate stained glass fixtures, and a dim lamp that's kind of like mood lighting, I guess, and that's a big, round stained glass doodad that sits right above the three separate fixtures and right below the fan blades. This is how it works:  pull the chain once and the dim light turns on, twice and the three little lights turn on, and three times for the whole ship and shebang to come to life, and since I didn't want to be in a semi-dark room, that's what I did. I grabbed the chain and pulled once, twice, three times, and that's when it happened--the little gold chain came right out of the goddamn piece-of-crap fan.

I shouldn't have to tell you that after getting a chair and inspecting the fan and trying repeatedly to stick the chain back into the little brass hole from which it came and getting a screwdriver and trying to unscrew the bottom of the fan in an attempt to somehow reattach the stupid gold chain and then searching Glenn's toolbox and getting another skinnier screwdriver to try again to unscrew the bottom of the fan because the sadistic lunatic who designed the fan put the screws directly beneath the stained glass fixtures so any attempts to turn a screwdriver were futile and realizing that I was completely incompetent and would probably have to sleep with my light on for the rest of my life, I was a little on the frustrated side. Okay, maybe a little more than a little. And that's when I lost it.

I stood there on the folding chair underneath my fan, screwdriver in hand, head bent forward, and cried. I stood there too defeated to sit down, unable to breathe, mascara running down my face, and just sobbed. I sobbed for the broken fan I couldn't fix, and I sobbed for the broken fans I would be unable to fix in the future. I sobbed and I sobbed, and then I tried again to dismantle the damn fan.

One hour and one shattered mercury-laden light bulb later, I turned off the breaker and went to sleep.