Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Home ownership is not for the weak, apparently.

We've been having some work done on the house lately. We're really unhappy with the quality of work we've received. I want to talk about it so much, but I also feel like it probably isn't proper for me to say too much until this whole situation is over. I always feel better after I can write about my problems, but  pouring my heart out over this keyboard only to click "save as private draft" is unbearably frustrating.

I've been upset about this whole thing for a week and a half, but today was the first day I actually cried. I was in the middle of making myself a snack when I looked at the work that was done and became completely overwhelmed with thinking about all of the stress involved in this whole situation. It was all I could do not to cry, so I stopped fighting it. I cried.

And you know what? It's stupid to cry over home improvements. No matter how unhappy you are with how they're turning out, it's stupid. Completely stupid.

Believe me. I know this is a stupid thing to cry about. I know that there are so many worse things that could be happening to me. I'm healthy. My kids are happy.  In the big picture, my life is so much more than I could have expected. I know that my house is just a house and our money is just money, but I can't stop thinking about it. It's like telling your brain, "Don't think about lavender elephants!" and then all your brain can obsess about is, "Ohhhh. Purple pachyderms! Can't get enough! Think about them! Become one with them!"

Every time I come home and I pull into the driveway, I see their work and I get angry. When I sit down to eat lunch, I look at their work and I lose my appetite. When I climb into bed exhausted after another long day, I just can't stop my brain from thinking, "Elephants. Don't think about them! Definitely think about something else. You aren't thinking about that, right? Does thinking about thinking about them count? Stop thinking that!"

But of course, I can't do that. It's not that easy. I can't just shut off my mind.

I'm so exhausted. I've been losing sleep over this stupid problem at night and then waking up early in the morning with the kids, who (due to this project) no longer have blackout shades in their bedrooms to prevent them from getting up at the crack of dawn. I wasted so much time on the phone calling people to try and figure out the situation and determine what I should do. We had my mother-in-law staying with us for the week and I feel like I barely got to spend any time with her because this problem was consuming me so completely.

For a year we saved up our money for this project, looking forward to getting it done and feeling excited about how nice it was going to look and how much more functional it'd make our house. But now I just regret ever calling them up in the first place.

The only upside I can think of for this whole mess is that at least I am getting better at sticking up for myself. That counts for something, right? I have to take any positive thought I can get at this point.

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