Okay, so this is going to seem a bit self-indulgent, and it kind of is, but I've been telling people that I've had this week from hell yet have given scant few details, so I'm going to just lay it all out and hopefully relieve the fact that I've been wanting to shank somebody.
Weekend before last was great. I twas the topper of a pretty decent week, and I got to go to APE 2007 (the comic convention I posted about), buy some stuff, and generally have a good time with my wife. I had no idea that the lovely weekend was to be prelude to the most frustrating week in memory.
Monday -
I called in sick on Monday. Unfortunately, of all the days I could have chosen to avoid going to the office, this was the worst possible one. Julia was feeling pretty lousy and had stuff to do, but she bailed on all of it because she felt like shit. Then we start butting heads for no apparent reason, and by the end of the day we're going at it like cats and dogs. I end up leaving to cool off, and when I get home she's already in bed sleeping, and it's only around 5 or something. She basically sleeps through the night until the next morning.
Tuesday -
Julia doesn't bother getting up after sleeping for like 14 hours, so I have to get my own ass to work. I get there late. Then I'm working, minding my own business, when she calls me crying her eyes out like the universe exploded. I ask her what happened and she tells me that something did explode. Our glass shower door. All over the bathroom and hallway.
It was kind of off its hinge and she tried to move it when it slid out, cracked, and shattered into a billion pieces all over everything. Of course she got cut up in the process, so she's bleeding and stuff while crying to me on the phone trying to explain what happened, and she's asking me to come home so I can help her deal with it. She's all emotionally worked up over our fight already, so she's totally panicking, but I can't get home because all my managers are gone. She finally calms down and seems like she'll be able to deal with cleaning up, and she says she isn't too badly hurt and stuff. So I finish out the day worrying like crazy, go home, deal with stuff.
Wednesday -
Now we have to deal with our apartment manager, who informs us that we'll have to pay for some of the damage even though the door was a piece of shit from, I'm guessing, at least the 60s, and hadn't worked properly ever since we moved in. Something else happened Wednesday too, but I can't remember. I think it was a car insurance thing, but that might have been the previous week. Either way, it involved paperwork and money and it sucked. "Finished" cleaning up, but Julia has to do most of it because I'm at work and she can't stand the mess being there, and that's all really bad for her back. After cleanup, my computer develops weird problems that screw up a bunch of shit and take me hours to fix.
Thursday -
Another fight, this one just because we're frustrated at stuff. It's resolved and the day is okay. But that night we go to my mom's for dinner, which is lovely, but upon leaving I promptly back directly into a car parked behind us. The streetlight isn't directly overhead and this car is painted this horrible green color (shitty makeshift job... looks like gopped on model paint) that just absorbs light like no tomorrow. I'm looking directly in my rearview at it and I can't even fucking see it until the brake lights come on. Then on the way home, some drunk idiot nearly plows into me. I go to bed, can't sleep, and stay up for way too many hours before finally getting any rest.
Friday -
I cut myself shaving first thing. Tired from no sleep, work has all kinds of unexpected crap that affects my situation very badly in the inevitable future changes that are shaping up, and after spending hours and hours preparing poetry to sound out to a few journals, the freaking post office is closed. Closed because their system is down. What, you can't leave the fucking door open so I can come in and buy stamps from the machine? It seems like no big deal, but I've worked my ass off for this and want nothing more than to see it through. It's a lot of work. Dealing with submission guidelines, deciding which submissions are good to go and to what magazines they should be sent, formatting everything on the computer and making it look pretty, checking for errors, printing stuff, buying and addressing bunches of envelopes, composing all the cover letters, logging where I've sent everything, who the contacts are, when to expect responses, etc. etc. So by the end of it, I'm ready for stuff to go and all I have to do is get some stamps for my self-addressed stamped envelopes. But I can't.
I go home and there's more complicated stuff. End up talking with Julia from 10 to like 1:30, which is fine except for the fact that I'm about to drop and can't keep my eyes open.
Saturday -
Weekend! Okay, this has to be over, right? The week is done, things are going to improve. I start by going to the post office. Mother! It's closed! For no reason! But they've got a machine in the lobby, and that's open because of the PO boxes. Great! Except they don't have the stamps I need. MOTHER! I need to get ones for the rate increase because when editors read my stuff and get back to me, it'll be months from now and everything will have gone up.
We end up going out to eat with Sy and Aimee, the day finishes out pretty well with some Four Swords. Maybe the weekend will be okay after all.
Sunday -
Sy and I decided to paint on Sunday, so I get up early to get ready. Go to the hardware store to pick up a toolbox and washers that I'll use to make a travel box for supplies and figures, a design Sy has already pioneered with good success. Leave the box empty for paint and supplies, superglue washers to the top so I can stick magnetized figures on them. Julia takes me to the subway after I get everything ready, but there's a light out and this guy nearly plows into her, so she guns it. The case of guys is on my lap, and it slams up against me, sending most of the 15 I was carrying all over the car. Great. Some of the washers fall off too, indicating to me that superglue wasn't the way to go. I get them all back except for one which I don't realize I've lost until later and won't find until Tuesday night. Fortunately none of them got very hurt. So I get on the subway.
But guess what? Early that morning, at about 3 or 4, a truck carrying 8,600 lbs. of gasoline drove into a pillar at our biggest freeway interchange, promptly exploding its cargo and basically melting the section of free it was driving on. This, of course, collapses and falls on the freeway underneath. Hooray! Nobody's hurt by some miracle of God, but you can imagine how this affects traffic and how many people are going to the subway to avoid it. And there are games happening in the city too. Getting my figures to Sy's is a nightmare, and it ends badly when I accidentally knock one metal guy off who doesn't have enough magnetism, and I kick him about 12 feet. He's a little deformed now. Arg.
Rest of the day goes okay until Julia calls me and tells me that the car's engine light came on. Oh good. This is going to be pleasant.
Monday -
Shittiest week ever is over, right? Everything has to go back to normal now, right? I'm lulled into a false sense of security because of a surprisingly decent commute (turns out it's just because nobody goes to work because of the freeway thing... until Tuesday), work is decent, and all is well until I get home and find out the my car is going to cost an arm and a leg for virtually nothing. Great. I pound some drinks and pass out.
Tuesday -
The subway is a clusterfuck. I get there early because I have to take the car because Julia's feeling crappy, so I drive and discover that not only is there no parking, the trains are crowded beyond reason. I have to park like 7 blocks from the freaking station which means I may as well have walked the whole way. It would have been faster. I also miss the first train because it's so stuffed with fucking people nobody else can get on. I get to work late and now have to make the time up on my lunch, and I need my lunch to do other stuff which I now can't do until Wednesday.
Wednesday -
Things seem okay. Day is going pretty well, and my one coworker friend at the office takes pity on me so we go out to lunch. We get some awesome pizza, and it's awesome. Until about 20 minutes after I finish eating it when I start to feel pressure in my chest and become *very aware* of my own heartbeat. I swear to God that it feels irregular and scary, but when I check my pulse, I'm fine. It takes an hour or two to wear off. I'd say it's a one-time thing, but this happened to me before maybe a year or so ago. This was when I was still smoking and not exercising well or eating well. But what the fuck? Now I don't smoke, I exercise for 20 minutes every morning, take a 25 minute walk home half the nights in a week, and I still feel funny? I have no idea if I'm even imagining it or what. I don't even know what the fuck it is. It starts usually after a heavy meal, and I'll feel like my heart skip a beat, and then for another two hours or something I'll feel as though I'm about to heave a heart attack, like there's pressure in my chest... maybe like someone is blowing up a balloon inside. Nothing tremendous, just... uncomfortable. And I feel very aware of my heartbeat, even though, as I said, if I check it, it always seems normal. And it's only happened twice. But what the fuck?
So yeah, the week from hell has continued into something much longer, apparently, and now I'm not only depressed, broke, and miserable, I'm fucking paranoid. Someone kill me.
