A Sleepless Night
For several reasons, I had some real trouble sleeping last night.
Yesterday was the day our housecleaning service comes. They're nice people, if not the best house cleaners, but whatever, as long as the bathroom and kitchen are cleaned, I'm not going to bust chops. Mike and I have an extra bedroom that we use as an office, and the cleaners are only supposed to vacuum in there. It's a disorganized room, a wall full of books on one side, and a desk full of computers on the other. The cleaners have been told not to clean my side of the desk--it's very messy with lots of papers and piles of books, etc. And they're not supposed to touch the shelves above the desk either.
Well, I got home last night to discover that, despite being told not to, they'd decided to clean that shelf anyway, and as a consequence, knocked over a wooden hand carved, hand painted dragon statue I have there, and of course, totally broke it in ways that I don't think are really fixable. I swear, I almost cried. All I wanted to do was scream at them, call up the service and demand not to be charged for yesterday, you know, just get my pound of flesh back. Of course, then I realized that if I do make the service not charge me, they'll probably dock the cleaners themselves for it. And that took a bunch of the steam out of my little self-righteousness train. I mean, I'm pissed and all, but do I really want to be responsible for docking the pay of someone who makes, like, 5 dollars an hour? What's the hell am I supposed to do here? I just don't know.
But in the midst of dealing with all that, an email arrives from the organizers of my 20th high school reunion, which is this Saturday, informing us that one of our classmates passed away only a few weeks ago. I hadn't seen this person since I don't know when--perhaps at NYU where we both went--but still, I was really devastated by the news.
And then, right on the coattails of that, I got an email from Cat Rambo telling me that she'd read my story "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" on the SFWA site and that she really liked it. (I should probably mention here that, thanks to the generosity of Rick Bowes, "Sun God..." has been recommended for a Nebula Award.)
Yeah, that was some strange little stew of emotions I had cooking up last night.
Yesterday was the day our housecleaning service comes. They're nice people, if not the best house cleaners, but whatever, as long as the bathroom and kitchen are cleaned, I'm not going to bust chops. Mike and I have an extra bedroom that we use as an office, and the cleaners are only supposed to vacuum in there. It's a disorganized room, a wall full of books on one side, and a desk full of computers on the other. The cleaners have been told not to clean my side of the desk--it's very messy with lots of papers and piles of books, etc. And they're not supposed to touch the shelves above the desk either.
Well, I got home last night to discover that, despite being told not to, they'd decided to clean that shelf anyway, and as a consequence, knocked over a wooden hand carved, hand painted dragon statue I have there, and of course, totally broke it in ways that I don't think are really fixable. I swear, I almost cried. All I wanted to do was scream at them, call up the service and demand not to be charged for yesterday, you know, just get my pound of flesh back. Of course, then I realized that if I do make the service not charge me, they'll probably dock the cleaners themselves for it. And that took a bunch of the steam out of my little self-righteousness train. I mean, I'm pissed and all, but do I really want to be responsible for docking the pay of someone who makes, like, 5 dollars an hour? What's the hell am I supposed to do here? I just don't know.
But in the midst of dealing with all that, an email arrives from the organizers of my 20th high school reunion, which is this Saturday, informing us that one of our classmates passed away only a few weeks ago. I hadn't seen this person since I don't know when--perhaps at NYU where we both went--but still, I was really devastated by the news.
And then, right on the coattails of that, I got an email from Cat Rambo telling me that she'd read my story "The Sun God at Dawn, Rising from a Lotus Blossom" on the SFWA site and that she really liked it. (I should probably mention here that, thanks to the generosity of Rick Bowes, "Sun God..." has been recommended for a Nebula Award.)
Yeah, that was some strange little stew of emotions I had cooking up last night.
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