I try to keep my complaints to myself, mostly because I think people who complain all the time are really terribly boring.

Well, this is my time to let my boring shine.

I did not sleep well last night. I got sucked into Wikipedia and got way too excited about Hilda Petrie and the Sothic cycle and all of a sudden it was ten o’clock at night and everyone in my house was already asleep except for me.

I’ve noticed that if I go to bed at exactly the right time, I fall asleep pretty easily. But if I stay up just ten minutes too late, I will be unable to settle myself and I just roll around with my nighttime anxiety for hours. This is what happened last night.

I woke up this morning at 5 AM to find a text message from my lead clerk saying she wouldn’t be in this morning due to major plumbing issues in her house. This would be my first day in the office without her and although I have been looking forward to having a chance to shine like this my first thought was “I am way too tired for this today.”

Well, I made it through. A substitute walked out halfway through the day, and I had a kid laying in the office door screaming for ten minutes and there were major bus issues but I made it.

And then my car broke down on the way home from work. Well, it tried to break down. It was making awful, dying noises and I managed to limp it to our mechanic and take an Uber home from there. The place was packed with cars and all they could do was shrug and tell me they would try to get to it tomorrow.

I spent the next hour at home grousing to myself about how much time I spend just picking up and tidying. Seriously. I did not have a long list of chores this afternoon: water plants, scoop cat litter, finish laundry, trim BT’s claws, order new bras, grocery shopping. That was it, that was the list. But I spent at least 45 minutes just dealing with packages and cleaning up the kitchen and hanging up coats and piling up shoes and sweeping up crumbs from breakfast. And only then could I get started on my actual list of chores.

It sucks to live in a house where you are the only person who cares about keeping things tidy, and it especially sucks to care deeply about keeping things tidy.

And the weather. THE GODDAMN WEATHER. It was 81 degrees here today and I am so mad about it. We still have our window AC units installed and I’m really glad we do and that is just ridiculous. I am starting to really overreact about how hot it has been in Minnesota this month and thinking to myself that maybe I should just get rid of all our winter coats since we clearly won’t need them in the future. I probably will never see snow again in my lifetime, right?

And then I picked up my youngest and he announced that he had lost his school iPad but he was characteristically nonchalant about this. And then I picked up my oldest and he, too, discovered that he had lost his school iPad today, but he was characteristically devastated and has had approximately three full mental breakdowns over this just this evening alone.

And then I remembered that I was supposed to pick up a candy donation today for a school event later this week. I did not do this because I was busy limping my car to the mechanic.

And I guess I can do that… tomorrow? On the bus?

And tomorrow the lead clerk is out again. And we have three unfilled vacancies.