#owmybrain

24 June, 2018

Dear Dad--

Yep, this week’s letter is going to have to be brief, as I’m experiencing some nastiness at home, and it consumed the last of my good humor about 24 hours ago.

Our air conditioning isn’t working! And it’s the second day in a row there’s been an emergency alert from the government weather pukes saying there’s a heat advisory because it’s going to be dangerously hot outside. The AC died early Saturday morning, so they sent a guy ‘round who banged on the unit for a little while, then gave up and said someone would have to come Monday to complete the work. In the meantime, they gave us a small window AC unit. It’s able to cool the space immediately around it down to about 88, in the early evening, and that’s about it. After sunset, it got up over 90 in our apartment.

I have called the emergency maintenance pukes again this morning to advise them that it was over 90 degrees INSIDE last night, even with the small crappy window unit, and this isn’t going to work for another evening. I left them a message; still waiting to hear back. But wait, there’s more!

Our water was switched off for about 12 hours yesterday! From early afternoon until early this morning due to a water main break. So...if we were hoping to stay cool by hopping in the shower, or, say, ever going to the bathroom again, we were just plain out of luck.

Past midnight Zach got up and was so angry he started hitting shit, including hitting himself a bunch of times. Now he has a big bruise from hitting himself. He broke down and told me he’d been working extra-hard the past week to give me as nice a week as possible, and to complain about life’s difficulties as little as possible, just to try to give me a week with less stress in it. I noticed, too. He was fired up and positive all week.

Then this shit happens. I’m having some kind of minor nervous breakdown, I think, which started last Thursday. I’ve taken a few days off work to get my shit together, but the depression is so bad for both of us at this point, that I don’t think a few days off work are going to help. Working on a plan B right now.

I know I complain about my job a lot, but in fairness, it’s a pretty tough job. I know four co-workers who’ve died while I’ve been with Progressive; three of them were suicides. So I’m thinking it’s about time Progressive extended some help to me about this shit.