Personal Journal: When Life Becomes Bigger Than You... THEN What?

An "occasional journal update," since the blockchain is a nice place to make a permanent record of things...

First It Was the Fraud Incident

It has been about two weeks since we got the notification from PayPal that there had been some "fraudulent activity" on my wife's account. Next thing you know... $681 has automatically "run through" to our bank account, resulting in other payments bouncing around due to lacking funds.

Of course, PayPal is pretty good about refunding things like that, so a recovery process started pretty fast. I already wrote about that, a couple of weeks back.

But the hassle factor is huge, and it's still ongoing since now we have to jump through 47 hoops in order to recover the overdraft charges from the event. I guess they make it so difficult in hopes that people just give up and "let it slide." Seems like the entire world is set up that way...

And Then the Gallery Flooded

The night of 10/10 we experienced something that's a rare thing around here: A "Microburst." Strong winds with following hail and intense rain that dropped 0.77" of rain in about 30 minutes. Resulting in a small flash flood that ended in the alley behind the gallery, so we and several other stores down in our below-grade shopping arcade were thoroughly flooded.

Which, of course, immediately shut everything down.

Finally-- today, nine days later-- everything has been professionally dried out and cleaned and the store is open for the first time again. Nine days without income from that... not good.

Although the damage to the gallery is relatively minimal it is not covered by insurance because evidently there is an exception for water "from the outside." Had it been a damaged water pipe in the building we would have been fine. But since it was rain, we're hosed. Also not good.

And then the Window Broke

Then-- in the middle of all this-- for no reason at all, the inside pane of one of our large picture windows overlooking the water spontaneously burst. 

I mean, just burst. 6'x6' pane of glass in 1000s of tiny pieces; nothing hit it, no earthquakes... and it's the INSIDE pane. Shattered.

Of course, the insurance doesn't cover this, either. A tree falling or a kid throwing a rock would have been fine but "mystery shattering" evidently falls under the heading of "manufacturing defects" which would have to be taken up with either the manufacturer or the company that installed the window... before we moved into the house.

Thankfully, the outer pane (since it was double glazing) is intact, so we still have a window... till we can come up with $2000 for a replacement.

And Then Steemit Seems Broken...

Not that it's really much of a personal thing, but on top of everything else, Steemit has been "acting wonky" for about a week. 

It's just another small annoying issue in a long string of unfortunate events.

But it does have an impact because I've had to start powering down my Steemit account to help pay for all these unexpected expenses, and when I can't get to the site to make transfers... that gets annoying, too.

I'd really hoped I wouldn't have to power down-- that this could just be a gradual savings account of sort-- but that was not to be. Oh well.

Not Ranting, Just Tired...

I thought I was going to sit down and have a good rant here, but truth is that I am just tired.

It feels like being pulled in opposite directions... the load of life is ramping up, and the tools I have to meet that (in this case, mostly financial) is getting smaller and smaller.

And I find myself wondering where that's going to end. So I sit here and write... not because it's productive, but at least it's cathartic.

How is your life, these days? Leave a comment-- share your experiences and feedback-- be part of the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Published 20171020 16:58 PDT