Sometimes if I've been in The Loop for more than 24 hours, I begin to fret that my apartment's gone to pot, the landlord's foreclosure-fault eviction has happened and the Cook County Sheriffs have thrown all of my stuff out onto the street. The secondary panic attack is that one or more of the utilities has been shut off, or that the sometimes not-so-neighborly neighbors have broken in and ransacked the place.
To date, however, most of this has never happened, apart from the City of Chicago dancing around the decision to provide water to our building since our MIA landlord owes them $1500. And Comcast notoriously has problems with our cable/internet service, usually requiring their technician to be intimately involved with the light poll in our alley.
Today, however, the Comcast being out was my fault. I was about $50 behind on my cable/internet bill, so my service was cut off while I was downtown. The self-imposed inconvenience was easily remedied and our service restored, so that turned out okay.
But Today wasn't done.
Luke and I came home, and he had to use the washroom. Too much toilet paper led to the toilet overflowing, and water running up the toilet, all over the bathroom floor, down the hallway and into the dining room. Again, more or less easily remedied problem. But I was growing more discombobulated as time progressed.
After some light grocery shopping, I realized I forgot to buy almond milk at the store and/or take a box of it home from Chris' this morning. In an effort to multi-task, we combined the milk run with me getting a haircut, the last two haircuts having turned my head into a complete clusterfuck of non-punkyness. It took a Croatian to remedy the damage done by the last two Polish stylists, and for that I certainly wasn't going to complain that the Croatian kept getting her scissors stuck in my ear cartilage piercings, both of which are still pretty fresh.
With almond milk and a decent coif, we returned home, where we have to trudge up 2 flights of steep, wooden stairs to get into our apartment. I'd swept the snow off, but a thick layer of ice from Thursday remained, and I neglected to procure salt. Naturally, I slipped and fell down 4 stairs on the second tier, spilling my purse. My left knee is a bit sore, as is my ankle, but it took me about 10 minutes to realize that blood was dripping from the knuckle of my pinky finger and down my hand.
The Murphy's Law day continued when Luke asked me, since the eviction hasn't come through yet, if I would put up our Christmas tree. Breathing deeply, I begrudgingly agreed, and brought the tree downstairs from storage. The instructions for the stand are totally ambiguious, but the tree is relatively straightforward--3 pieces that click into one another.
Simple enough, right? But this is me. And this was Today.
I became so irritated with the tree stand the first time I struggled with it's assembly that I didn't notice that the whole time, I was attempting to slide part 3 into where part 1 was supposed to go. Using my newly-acquired skills through cognitive behavior therapy, I stepped back from the tree situation and decided to take a break and make dinner.
This proved to be a good move, seeing as once I'd fortified my body with dinner and clicked on "To Kill A Mockingbird" on Movie Plex, I had a fresh pair of eyes with which to approach the tree's assembly. And that time I got it right.
Until it was time to untangle the ball of lights I hurriedly put away in the box after last Christmas. In the meantime, I explained the day's events to my mom on the phone, and she offered some unexpectedly sage advice..."Oh, just throw them on there and it can look like a Charlie Brown tree. At least you put one up so Luke will be happy." And he was! He was even more happy after I de-clumped some of the lights and strung some of them all the way around the tree. This leaves the tree crookedly standing with a minorly Big! Huge! Clump! right in the middle, but oh well. Some ornaments and bead garland and no one will really play that much attention. Remedy! Who wants to tree trim at Camp Swanky with us?
Today, as a proper noun, however, has much more significance than merely being Wow, What a Day that Clusterfuckedly Sucked Due to Increasingly Irritating Events. For today is December 6th. Today is all monumental and adorably important to me and someone I love very much, someone to whom I'll be forever grateful and whose friendship and support have been critical to my recovery, healing and soul. I want him to know just how much he's appreciated and how much I will always treasure our friendship. We have a running commentary about how we'll one day sit on a porch swing in our 80's and look back fondly at all of our adventures, for sure, but I'm not thinking that the revisitation should be on a December 6th unless we've both retired to Boca Raton in the interim.
Today I will soon retire to bed, in a functioning, warm apartment, sober and in the company of my son, having shared a quick goodnight on the phone with the love of my life.
Thank you, Today.
God Bless You, Christopher.
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