Complainey

Bulleted list.

* The weekend is never long enough. I can never either get enough work caught up or relax enough to feel right come Monday.

* (This is less complainey and more of a worry). My 87-year-old aunt is in the hospital. Apparently she had some hallucinations the other day. She's on a variety of meds, including meds that screw with your electrolytes, and she probably doesn't drink enough water. The various symptoms sound to me like dehydration but one of her doctors is making noises like "mild heart attack." She wants to go home, apparently the hospital wants to keep her. (I say: keep her as long as Medicare/Medicaid (she qualifies for either so I'm not sure which takes precedence) will allow). I don't know. Anytime someone over 80 has health problems it's a worry.

* There's another plumbing problem in my house. Had a plumber out already and the simple cheap fix he tried didn't do it...tomorrow (provided it's not bucketing down rain) he's going to try something from outside. He told me that he only ripped open walls as a "total last resort" but I'm kind of scared...this is an old old house and I am just terrified there's a collapsed pipe or something somewhere that's going to cost thousands of dollars to fix. (I guess I better mention the problem - the bathroom sink won't drain. Everything else drains fine. He's afraid of snaking the sink because he's afraid of cracking the old pipe with their power-snake. I don't know. Maybe I can live without a bathroom sink. Do all my washing in the tub, and brush my teeth in the kitchen? Or maybe I could get it plumbed into the toilet tank, and flush with used sink-water, and therefore be a bit environmentally friendly?)

*That said? I love that my town now has a Mr. Rooter franchise. They came out on a weekend (THEY ANSWERED THEIR PHONE ON A WEEKEND, PEOPLE. That is real progress for here) and didn't charge me any more than they would have for a weekday call. Also, they seem committed to making it right, unlike some workmen I've had in who work up to a point and shrug and go, "Sorry, babe, you're on your own now."

* I am deeply bothered when something doesn't function the way it is supposed to. I cannot DEAL with broken stuff on a deep and visceral level. Something in my psyche keeps crying out that it needs to be FIXED and the world WILL NOT BE RIGHT until it is fixed and it needs to be FIXED NOW. I realize that this is totally ridiculous and it's just a dang bathroom sink, but still. I want it fixed. I want to be able to brush my teeth at night while looking at myself in the mirror like a normal human, and not while staring into my neighbor's weird son's tv room (which is the view from my kitchen window)

* Part of my concern is kind of the same concern I feel when I go to the doctor - that the problem I see symptoms of isn't a simple problem and it is merely the tip of the iceberg and there are all sorts of painful, expensive, and life-disrupting things coming up that I will have to gird up my loins for. Like moving out of my house for a month while every pipe is replaced, or something.

* Also, the automatic window roll-downer things on my car quit. So I can't do drive-throughs any more (this is a problem with banking, not so much for food - I'm probably best off not being able to drive through the Dairy Queen). It's another thing that bugs me a tiny bit (plus, what do I do if a cop stops me? I know you're not supposed to get out of the car. Do I just holler through the window, "MY WINDOW WON'T OPEN WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO INSTEAD?") I know they're expensive to fix, and considering the $800 water heater (well, it was a $350 water heater and $450 of labor and code-updating) and the God-knows-how-much the sink unclogging/OMG EVERY PIPE IN THE HOUSE NEEDS REPLACING NOW that I'm facing this week, I just can't see getting them fixed any time soon.

besides, car matters less to me than house. Car can be out of sight, out of mind. House is top-of-mind because it's my HOUSE, you know? If my house is broken something is deeply wrong.