Foul turned fair.

Well, the clouds have finally parted, both literally and figuratively on my little Georgia world. The skies yesterday were noncommittal at best--the sun refused to shine, and the clouds refused to rain, and there I was, stuck, just waiting for something, anything, to happen. My painters, who just happen to also be my brothers-in-law, were supposed to come yesterday to finish painting my writing cubby as a belated birthday present. They didn't show up, however, and it put me in a particularly foul mood, which made me feel guilty and demanding and selfish for being resentful, which led to feeling spoiled and bratty and painfully middle class, which equalled to even more foul-mouthiness and squinty-eyededness. I can safely attribute a full 40 per cent of my rancor to rascally hormones, another 20 per cent to the weather, but the other 40 I'm going to have to take complete bitchy credit for.

And I didn't tell you this: My kitchen floor is now rippled. Yes, unbelievably wavy, which is an attribute that I don't really enjoy in a floor. Last week, there was a running water leak stemming from somewhere underneath the dishwasher, and by the time we discovered it and could stop it, the distinct smell of rotting wood and curling linoleum was lurking in the kitchen like a house guest that has gotten smelly after three days and won't bow out gracefully. So, long story short, I'm back to washing dishes by hand again, which is something I once told my husband (okay, so it was just a couple of days ago) that I would kill myself before I would do. But, here I am, still alive, and doing it. It wasn't quite as bad as I remembered it, and with the radio on, it was virtually painless. (It's really difficult to feel overly dramatic about a broken dishwasher when the radio is telling you about Chinese school children buried in earthquake rubble. Just doesn't compare.)




So if you're keeping my household appliance score, I'm now without said dishwasher in addition to the absence of a working oven. Believers in the Secret/law-of-attraction might say that I somehow invited the demise of my kitchen by my inability to reconcile my "domestic life" with my "creative life." To which I would reply, "no crap." This "either/or" thing that I do has to change before the universal Big Bad Wolf comes and blows my whole house down. (: There's always a silver lining, of course, mine being the way the sun is starting to clear the pecan tree, the coffee pot brewing my wake-up call, and an entire Saturday to make up with myself.