If you haven’t yet hear the abbreviation, it stands for “F* My Life”. Normally, I’m a pretty easy going person. There are days when it feels like karmically speaking, I must have been a real prick in one of my past lives. I say that because I can’t think of what I’ve done to deserve what I’m going through in this one.
I got permanently laid off at the start of April, which was its own set of pain and anguish. I’ve never gotten laid off before, so I do ask myself sometimes what I did to deserve getting let go over other people. I try not to dwell on it, mainly because it’s not terribly constructive or useful. I’ve had a few interviews and lots of leads, so I’m hopeful that this will pass.
In a way, it was fortunate that I got laid off right after my former employer paid out the annual bonus, as I had that plus severance, plus my federal refund come through just as my water heater decided to spring a massive leak. With labor, it ended up being almost a grand, which is money I would not have had on hand if I hadn’t had a sudden influx of cash. I’m waiting to see what catastrophes will happen when my stimulus check shows up. The refrigerator has been making funny noises, and the oven burns everything, so I’m thinking they are going to be next.
We were pretty lucky though, we got the new water heater in two days after it went out and only had to take cold showers for one day. Actually nobody took a shower since we had noplace to be other than in the house since Covid pretty much makes going outside something we only do when absolutely necessary.
The flooded basement did have one positive effect, all of the water flowed into the main half of the basement, so we were able to haul the carpet out and dispose of it relatively easily. We’re probably going to replace it with vinyl flooring, since that will deal with water much more easily if we have another problem, though I can’t imagine what that would be unless the sump pump goes for some reason. I probably need to have it checked.
We also had to trim back a tree that was growing over our yard since a large branch was resting on our power line. That was making my wife and I both nervous, but we got it all trimmed down. That’s kind of a fun process to watch, mostly because 1) I don’t like heights at all, and 2) There’s a sort of strategy they execute in bringing a large branch down without becoming an America’s Funniest Video entry.
Things have settled down finally, so now it’s just a matter of figuring out where we go from here.