Nerve Gas

My nerves are shot. I think my body has accumulated a near-toxic level of mental nerve gas. For those who don't read the espionage genre, here's a quick blurb on nerve gas:

Nerve gas causes a chain reaction that allows neural impulses to be continually transmitted, causing muscles to contract, organs to produce chemicals, etc. If neural impulses are not blocked after the initial transfer, those muscles and organs will not be able to relax until eventually...one of the effects kills the victim.

I'm starting to feel like I have just such an overload in progress.

A few days ago, our water was turned off for the day while the plumbing in our basement was being done. We managed to not use the bathroom for about 7 hours (though the boys--not including Eric--did relieve themselves in the woods, Eric was at work--or maybe he would have done the same, and Stephanie is still in diapers, so really, it was just me). I also managed to cook dinner without having the water on. I know, you're thinking, "Most people would have ordered out." Aren't you impressed? Well we don't have any spare change right now while we're paying for the basement.

Later that day, the air conditioner quit working. Just FYI, our first 3 days of fall have all been in the 90s. It was too late to get anyone to come look at it that day.

The next day, our electricity was off for almost the entire day while we had a new fuse box installed and inspected. This meant no one could come look at the A/C then either. Again, I managed to cook dinner instead of ordering something.

Somewhere in the middle of this, my basement guy said something in passing about a new building code that required better grounding of the water main, because if something or other happens to touch it while someone in the house is in the tub or taking a shower, they will be electrocuted. "That's it," I thought. "From now on we'll just have to hose the kids off. No more baths at our house. Too risky." (He tells me it's really nothing to worry about, but I just couldn't bring myself to put them in the tub last night and risk frying them. So they still stink--though, interestingly enough, that same day they hosed themselves off without permission at a neighbor's house, while wearing their nice shoes, no less.)

Today, a guy came to look at the A/C. He tweaked some things and fiddled around in there and got it going again. It stopped working less than 2 hours later. Did I mention we had record-breaking heat today? 98F! And at 6:20pm, I still entered my 85-degree kitchen and cooked dinner.

Amongst all this, I am still homeschooling (it feels like I'm running an independent-study program) and making hourly decisions on various aspects of my basement. Now that the whining is done, I should point out how thankful I am to be able to finish the basement right now. I remain convinced that, when it's all over, it will have been worth it. For the first week, Daniel asked me every day, "Is the basment done yet?" He thinks they are way behind schedule.

I think what I need is a night out... and a long weekend.