I Appreciate You!

What a dreadful night. I am on track to get zero minutes of sleep. It is morning. After canceling my September trip and shortening my current trip and canceling the associated cat care, I began my packing project, slightly complicated by the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any packing tape on the premises.

I put all of the flattened cardboard boxes in an empty room and started putting things to be donated in another empty room. In going through all of my parents’ stuff over these past four years, I had been saving for last things like family photographs and my father’s files and letters my parents wrote to each other in the 1960s: things potentially of supreme sentimental importance. In one letter, my father, in his twenties, writes about an old lady with dementia in the apartment next door who made a lot of noise. Sixty years later, his young bride was herself an old lady with dementia. He was doing a summer internship or something at Lawrence Livermore Lab in Pleasanton, CA. Maybe in that same letter, he referred to it as Unpleasanton.

Certainly the letters and photos are of great sentimental value; maybe not every single thing in my father’s files. All of these things were in the library, either on a bookshelf or in the closet. I put them on the floor in the same room where I put all of the cardboard boxes, making several trips, crying and crying and crying and crying and crying.

Then, knowing what is going to happen is that five days from now, the air will be a lot better and I’ll be kicking myself for shortening my trip, I un-canceled the cat care. And then, yep, I rebooked my September trip, despite the fact that I’m definitely never coming to this house of misery again, using the eCredit generated an hour earlier plus an additional $200, on the theory that an action taken when one is completely distraught and sleep deprived is unlikely to be the right one. I am now in the process of trying to make this current trip end when it was originally going to.

Also, I knew that if I said to my sister that I hate it here and I’m never coming here again and it’s too sad and my head hurts and the air stinks and my throat feels weird and I don’t want to buy this house and I canceled my September trip and shortened my current trip and I am purposely not going to do any weeding because it might be fun and then I might want to come here again where I am never, ever coming again, there would be a little kindly pause, and she would say in a mild tone, “Well, it seems like you were really enjoying weeding. I wonder if the air will be better in five days,” and then I would say, “Yeah, you’re probably right!” and rush to the computer to do what I already just did, so this was very efficient. 

Delta’s website balked at giving me the same flight back, so I had to text with a representative.

I have noticed, as likely have you, that a lot of people have switched from saying “I appreciate it” to saying “I appreciate you”; I was thinking maybe this was something started by Christians, but I’m not sure.

I had never said it to anyone until, why, I guess that was just yesterday. Hitherto, I couldn’t quite get the phrase to come out of my mouth. It seemed syrupy or something. I was thinking I would just be paying my sisters for their shares of this house that I am definitely not buying, and had liberated money from my savings with that figure in mind, but I will need to wire to the title company the entire cost of the house (ugh), so I needed another withdrawal from my 401(k). For some reason, the interaction was a little out of sync, so at some point, I said, “I appreciate you,” and it made a night-and-day change in the person I was speaking with. All of a sudden, she spoke as if I were her dear friend. It was like magic.

So when I couldn’t change my flight on Delta’s website and had to initiate a chat, I decided I would say that to the human representative who comes online after the machine retires in confusion. I couldn’t believe it when the chat began and I saw that Delta’s introductory automated information ended with, “We appreciate you!” They beat me to it.

I therefore had to up the ante; I told the person, “You’re doing a great job! I appreciate you.” I often tell people they’re doing a great job (if they are, or if I can see that they’re trying to).

I did end up getting my original flight back, for an additional $119.

Am I actually losing my mind? Yes, perhaps, but I guess there’s no law against it. There are pages in my calendar that say “Ypsi,” meaning I will be here on that day, but it’s crossed out, and then it says “Ypsi” again, and is crossed out again, and now says “Ypsi” for the third time. I think it’s basically grief.