A handsome piece of deformity.

The past few days, I’ve been distracted, irritable and grumpy and, overall, an unpleasant person to be around. Or, rather, at least that’s my perception of how I’ve been. In a valiant vague effort to apologize to the lovely young lady with whom I cohabitate and am engaged to marry, I did my damnedest this afternoon to explain why I’ve been acting the way I have.

Just as I told her earlier today, starting Wednesday afternoon, I’d been experiencing an unexplainable sense of dread.

Now, bear me with me. As I type, all the windows in the apartment are open, the fan is running and the dryer’s on, my feet are wet and my stomach’s grumbling.

Starting mid-Wednesday, I was seized with an unshakable anxiety, a certainty that something bad was going to happen. It was a spontaneous thing; one moment, I was fine, chipper, top of the world and braced for a long weekend of relaxation. The next, I was distracted, paralyzed by a fear without face or form, ruminating on every little thing happening in my life in an attempt to account for the fear that had settled in my mind. I’m not one to pander to paranoia, but I’ve come to trust my instincts over the years. I…

Argh. My fingers are freezing, as are my feet, I’m hungry, and — in all honesty — I can think of at least half a dozen other things I should be doing with my time right now. I’ll try to cut this short without removing anything of importance. Those of you who, like me, are nitpickers for tense in verb are likely to have noticed that I have been speaking of this feeling, this dread, in the past tense. That’s because the premonition of ill-action that was weighing on me has passed. Something bad happened, and just how bad of a thing it is remains to be seen.

This afternoon, my father came to the apartment to assist me in tightening a leaking faucet. Simple though it may seem, I needed someone with the tools for the task, having none suitable myself. Call placed, coffee on the go and Amy already at work, I sat back to kill the time by grading some papers.

Dad arrived. As a precaution, we sought to terminate the water flow in the apartment. Unable to find the kill-switch, went to find on-site managers for the information. No managers found. Decided to proceed with tightening the faucet regardless, as the work required was simple. Tools out and ready to roll, the last things I heard prior to all hell breaking loose went something like this… rrrrrrrrrrumblethe hell…tinkFWOOOOSSSSSSSSH!

I’ve never run so fast in my life. From the fourth floor, I was on the first in a matter of seconds, yelling at the height of my voice for an on-site manager to kill the water main which, within two minutes of that fucking fwoooossssssssh!, was done and accomplished.

My formless anxiety, an intangible fear, became something very real, and very tangible. The tap in my bathroom exploded a few hours ago. The damage to my suite — which, as mentioned above, is on the fourth floor — is minimal. Two of the suites below me sustained, at first glance, minimal damage. The apartment on the ground floor, however, was not as lucky. A lot of the water is pooling down there, wetting the carpet. I’ve been on major damage control all afternoon and, between shivering from the combined cold air coming in through the open windows and my wet clothes, I’ve been hoping like hell that the initial assessment of the damage — minimal — is accurate and that this is as bad as it gets. I’m praying that I’m not billed a few thousand dollars for dry-wall, ceiling, and carpet repair; hoping that they won’t be necessary.

One sense of dread has been replaced by another, but at this time I know what it is that I am afraid of.

UPDATE: I’ve just learned that one of my sisters was in a car accident today, as a passenger, due to the carelessness of the driver of another vehicle. I’m glad you’re alright, kiddo!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 12th, 2004 at 5:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.