Two Too Many

Suffer, you ask? Who’s suffering? I am. And people around me too. I hear people everywhere complaining that enough is enough. Two women I overheard at my gym this morning were going on and on about how they couldn’t stand another second of imposed, forced merriment, especially with the current spouse’s children and attendant others. A friend of mine was about to throw her husband out of the nearest window if he hadn’t vacated the house by 7:30 this morning.

And, have you noticed all the problems that have gone unresolved because no one has been on the job for all this time? Really, is this what the Holiday Spirit brings? Apparently so. It’s Post-Holiday Chaos, and it’s definitely not a desirable state.

What day is it anyway? I have no idea. I fear I’m caught in as many Mondays as the eight Sundays that have just passed. Counting today as the first, I have seven more to go–providing I can live through them.

Today was classic among Black Mondays–even though the calendar says it’s Wednesday. It seems that everyone in this country had the same idea of trying to get their lives back on track, and as a consequence, it was impossible to call any business–or person, it turns out–and even hope to be connected to a life form. Comcast, for example, either gave a flat-out busy signal, not even granting admission to its pandora’s box of endless, circling options, or trapped you into thinking you were on the way to a person, only to cut off the extended hold you had already endured with a wimpy taped message of, ‘Your call cannot be completed at this time, please try your call again later.’ Right. So much for customer relations.

Not only did I have cable problems, I had modem problems, router problems, camera lens problems, coffee-maker problems, microwave light problems, lamp problems, caller I.D. problems, and worst of all, people problems. Is Mercury retrograde again?

People–even the ones you know and think you can count on–don’t communicate anymore–or at least they can’t be counted on, after all, to do that. Another Monday problem? I left a 9:15 a.m. voice mail for a friend to whom I’ve devoted the last four months of Sundays of my life, as well as most of the other days. He should have called me back within minutes–an hour at most. Four hours later, and no call back…and when I called him again, by then well beyond fit to be tied and hysterical to boot, all he could say was he hadn’t noticed my message. Hadn’t noticed? Had he gone deaf and blind? How can someone who wears his phone as a permanent and un-removable appendage, not notice that he has a message from the person he considers his personal lackey? The inexplicable waits–endlessly, obviously–for explanation.

And then there’s my landlady–who was the source of the internet, cable, modem, and router problems. Do you think I could get an audience with her, or even just her attention, to get these things fixed? Not until 7:00 tonight–after I’d spent the entire day running uselessly in more of those endless circles, trying to get the problems righted on my own. And then she wanted to let it all wait for a month (!) until her personal computer guru returns from a European vacation–so he could deal with the router problem instead of her. Right. Four weeks without internet? Which dinosaur era does she hail from?

I say that we’ve had way too many Sundays for all of these problems to build up with nowhere to go, and now as they all come crashing down around our ears–or at least mine–there’s no digging out from the avalanche.

So, at the end of my first Monday after the eight Sundays just passed, I’m frazzled, frenzied, fraught with frustration and fury at the injustice brought on by ‘The Holidays’–and I’m not saying whose.

I only hope and pray that a situation like the one we are in now is never allowed to repeat…but wait, hang on. The news is not good.

Next year we’re in for the same thing…Christmas and New Year’s are on Thursdays, so two more back-to-back four-day weekends, and two too many more months of Sundays. Never say I didn’t warn you.

I refuse to allow myself to take this punishment again. I’m booking myself now for the next flight to Mars where I plan to stay for the duration of next year’s holidays and chaotic aftermath. On Mars there are no Mondays–or Sundays–I’ve already checked.