I am not a good person to have around in a crisis.
I react. I cry and I vent and I scream and I stomp.
Eventually -- once all of that is out of the way -- I calm down and think about solutions to my problems. At that point, I'm pretty good.
But I need the time to process my emotions and express them first. And some of the people who are closest to me have a hard time understanding that.
I'm told that there are family members who think I am about to have a nervous breakdown over the stuff that's happening to our house (the latest: When they removed the last bit of our hardwood floor - you know, the part that hadn't been damaged by the poria -- they discovered subterranean termites. As you can imagine, this was not news I wanted to hear).
I would like to announce to the world right now: I AM FINE.
It is the 5th of May. Last month, I had celebrated my daugher's birthday, Bat Mitzvah and Passover... was told that I had an abdominal mass that may need surgery... hosted my mother-in-law for a three-week stay... and discovered that our home had been infested by a wood-eating fungus that was destroying my house, was not covered by homeowners insurance and was given an early estimate that it would cost $20-$40,000 to fix.
The fact that I didn't end up in an institution around April 15 probably indicates that I'm doing OK, mental-healthwise.
I got through the celebrations, was relieved to learn that the thing in my belly is benign, and entertained my mum-in-law while my home got torn apart. But even that wasn't as bad as first feared: the poria didn't get much past our hardwood floors - and the cost of pulling them out and fixing the problem has turned out to be a fraction of that first estimate.
The termites? We're lucky to have caught them early.
In fact, I'm feeling pretty darned fortunate right now. We actually have the funds to deal with this -- money we had earmarked for home improvements anyway. We held off because of the economy, but faced with the need for emergency repairs, we were able to cover it.
And now that we've started, we're going to continue. There's less of it now to do what we had planned (which had not included removing and replacing the floor) -- but that just means we have to get creative. We'll be venturing into the world of DIY; opting to do as much as we can without the help of contractors.
It could be fun... or I might be crazy.
But I do feel lucky.
