when it's raining, let it rain.

You ever have one of those days where everything just seems to go wrong?

I pride myself on not being much of a worrier. I take things one day at a time, one step at a time, for the most part. Few things stress me out.

Until today.

It all started with a 2:30 am wake up call from one of the nine dogs currently living in my house. Yeah. There are nine of them (actually ten now...but we'll get to that later). So I get up, put on my crocs (because I can no longer walk barefoot in my house without fear of stepping in something unpleasant), and take the eight six-week-olds, plus their mama, outside to go potty. I stand in a stupor for about ten minutes, waiting for all of them to (hopefully) get everything out of their system. And then I round them all up, two at a time, and finally get back in bed. My next and final wake-up call is at 6:30 am, and I do it all over again.

But that's fine. I've been doing that every day, five times a day for a month now. And they are my babies, and I love them. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do, right?

Plus, I think to myself, "Today is going to be better anyway. I will actually get to stay home with them since I'm staying home from work to wait for the internet guy to come fix my internet." That really is a relief to me since I usually have to drive home for lunch, inevitably clean up a floor full of poo, then leave them again, and come home again to a floor full of poo, puppy pads be damned. But I'm home today. I got this.

As I try my best to harness my optimism, more and more things start piling up and it's getting harder and harder to maintain my happy-go-lucky attitude. First,  I get a Facebook message from a friend of mine informing me that she has a partial payment from one of my past clients (who were friends of hers) who never paid me for the work I did for them, work I paid for out of pocket. She got it by going to their house and yelling at them. Obviously, this is the last thing I ever would have wanted, and now clients who already seemed to have very little respect for me have even less. I mean, I'm grateful to have some of my money back, since the mortgage is due and all, but I really can't afford to have even the slightest negative connotation associated with my business that I've worked so hard to keep positive. Not to mention the fact that this whole situation brought back up the fact I am out a whole lot of money I couldn't afford to lose, which just makes me mad all over again.

Then I get a text message from the people who were supposed to adopt one of the puppies. They have decided they can't really keep him, so I am back to having ten dogs. Then the guy who is supposed to be helping us (at my other job) with programming our site is being really vague and unhelpful, not answering my questions or doing any of the things we are requesting of him, things we pay him to do. And he seems to have no respect for me either. I think it's because I'm a girl, so I try to be more assertive and firm, but it still just amounts to him calling my boss and then my boss getting him to do what needs to be done.

Then the straw that broke Jessi's optimism for good: Century Link. Never. Came.

I called them to see why they hadn't shown up yet. I got transferred three times (and the person before never tells the person I am being transferred to the problem, so I keep having to repeat myself). Finally, the last person tells me that the technician decided I was not eligible for the upgraded equipment they were coming to install (because my current internet was not working), and "there is a notification pending in the system to let you know that he won't be coming." WHAT.  A notification is pending? You couldn't have just called me? Since, you know, YOU ARE ALSO A PROVIDER OF PHONE SERVICE.

Commence the weeping.

Let's be honest. If it was just one, maybe even two or three of these things happening at one time, I could have handled it. I think. It was just all coming down on me at once. And all the cold, uncomfortable, unlikeable things about humans and what we sometimes do to each other felt like one of those rainstorms that hits you right after you've gotten your hair done. Except, like, way worse.

I don't think I've said the F word so many times in my entire life.  I mean I'll let one fly every once in a while when I just need to let out some hot air, but I try to keep my composure. I try to be respectful to those around me, I try to be a good Christian girl, asking what would Jesus do and all that. But not today, friends. Not. Today.

Have you ever read "The Birds of Killingworth," by Henry Longfellow? It's basically about a town of people who kill all of the birds because their singing is getting on their nerves, but then all of the bugs that the birds were eating, are now eating the townspeople's crops. So they end up going out and finding more birds to bring back into town, realizing that their singing is far less of an evil than starving to death.

Interesting.

You know, it really gets on my nerves when people start busting out in Annie show tunes whenever I'm having a bad day, so I will spare you that. But, I do think there is wisdom in Longfellow's words when he says, "The best thing one can do when it is raining, is to let it rain."

I know that "the sun will come out tomorrow," but what I need to know is that right now, it's raining, and that is actually ok.

We are allowed to have bad days. We are allowed to soak up the misery and cry it out. Maybe have a glass of wine or four. Buts let's not kill all the birds either, you know what I mean? Cause if it's not birds, then it's bugs. And that's not cool.

So I'm just gonna sit here and cry for a while until I feel a little more like Annie, and I give you permission to do the same.

xoxo,
jessi

p.s. If you've never seen Emperor's New Groove, then watch it next time you are having a bad day. It just might help.