Tom has about two weeks of summer left. The floor is not close to being done. I am trying to be patient.

When he goes back to teaching, I feel a little less stressed about my job and the house (even though we are now officially upside down in our mortgage instead of just theoretically) because I’m also less jealous because he’s not home all day while I’m underemployed and bitter.

But if he’s not at home, who will sign for our packages? I can get them at work, but everyone is so nosy about what I get. I am tempted to order sex toys from Good Vibrations or Babeland and have them delivered to the office just for the shock value.

Needless to say, I am on that Flight Attendant’s side in this recent carry-on luggage/dramatic beer + inflatable slide fracas. Sometimes, you just can’t take anymore shit and somebody hits you in the face with something they shouldn’t even be touching, and you need a drink and to ride on a slide.

It’s not the blues, it’s not the heat, or the wind, or the humidity. It’s August. Everything seems to become never ending monotony. This town gets so quiet without the tourists and the locals always go on vacation… restaurants close until October, stores don’t restock until November, and the coffee shop makes less muffins than usual so I have to get in early to get what I like or they’ll run out.

I am combating the doldrums as best I can by organizing and cleaning the small spaces in my house, keeping up with laundry, and then doing whatever I want to. It’s kind of satisfying.

I got back from vacation a week ago, perfectly affordable vacation; perfectly delightful, perfectly perfect.

But I want more! I can’t stand being at work right now. I’ve worked here longer than anywhere I’ve ever worked and it’s DRIVING ME NUTS. I’m thankful to at least be underemployed when so many people are just unemployed, but how long can a person go on doing shit they have no interest or investment in before they climb up to the top of a clock tower and start picking off the stragglers?

We could use a large windfall right about now. The house has been bleeding our savings slowly, and the improvements aren’t happening fast enough for me to feel like the value is there. So I feel like we have no money and nothing to show for it.

And at the same time, I feel like I’m drowning in the brick-a-brack of my life, and I so want to do a give-away. Just pile it all in the driveway and let people come and take what they want. No charge.

We had no air conditioning in the office today and it got up to 88 degrees before I left for physical therapy. GROSS.

But that’s not the grossest part, people. The grossest part is that the vent pipe for the compressor was clogged with COCKROACHES AND THEIR NESTS and that’s why the AC wasn’t working.

Then I came home and Tom told me that last night he felt something brushing against his back while he was sleeping and he thought it was Arrow’s whiskers. I think you know where this is going. IT WAS A COCKROACH THE SIZE OF MY HAND*. I am so close to giving up and burning this mothereffer down but then I’d have no where to keep all of my books and yarn.

I am really looking forward to my vacation in Warshington, where cockroaches are only in the grossest places you can think of (and only because they can’t survive in the ecosystem naturally) and not in my home or workplace or hotel or wherever it is I’m staying.

*The size of my hand when I was four years old.

My floor is gone. We are going on vacation in two weeks. Our border tile may not get here until next week. We have to scrape the thin-set up before we can lay the tile.

I’d like to finish the office/guest room before the end of the summer.

My house is a mess. The dust is making me wheezy.

My neck is killing me. The air conditioning at work is borked.

Also, the dog threw up today, but she was fine by the time I got home. When I came through the door, she was acting like she had something very important to tell me and she ran over to where she threw up and ran back to me a few times. Genius dog.