The Scarlett O’Hara Pledge
Jan. 8th, 2025 10:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraHallelujah!!
Heating oil got delivered, and heat has been restored.
Five minutes later, the legal aid attorney called me back, and she was just fabulous, compassionate but sharp. Iggy now has a file going with Ulster County, & if he ever does anything like this again, I will sue him in civil court for pain & suffering, and I will report the house’s numerous building code violations to the Ulster County authorities.
I am absolutely sure the only reason he finally moved on the heating oil is because, on BB’s advice, I kept stressing the property damage aspects of a non-functioning furnace: The high tomorrow is gonna be 22°! Your pipes are gonna freeze & burst.
Strategy! Intimations of property damage trump appeals to human decency with Iggy.
It was galling to have to behave strategically with that STD discharge in human form, Iggy, but I absolutely realized that crying or raging—emotionally satisfying though they might be to me—would produce no practical results.
Bottling up all those tears and outrage for six days, though, meant that once the status quo was restored, I had a mini-breakdown, and instead of doing all those productive things I had planned to do, I was quite incapable of doing anything besides eating gummies and binging a TV show called The Franchise, which is extremely funny & which I liked a lot—so naturally, it hasn’t been renewed for a second season.
I had been planning to work out this morning, but I am really behind on the To Do list, plus it is 16° out. So, I’ll stay inside & Remunerate.
###
I don’t know if there are any valuable life lessons I can take away from my six days without a functioning furnace at the height of an Arctic blast.
It’s a little late in the game to take the Scarlett O’Hara pledge: As God is my witness, I’ll never be marginal again!
I am marginal. Once upon a time, I had a business, a house, and a marriage, but I lost those things, and I wasn’t even culpable for the loss—well, except for sticking it out with the husband whom I should have shed a decade earlier.
It is what it is.
Yes, it is humiliating to have one’s nose rubbed in one’s own insignificance. Humiliating and dehumanizing.
On the other hand, no permanent damage was done & “pride” is merely a bizarre extension of the mammalian territorial instinct.
Heating oil got delivered, and heat has been restored.
Five minutes later, the legal aid attorney called me back, and she was just fabulous, compassionate but sharp. Iggy now has a file going with Ulster County, & if he ever does anything like this again, I will sue him in civil court for pain & suffering, and I will report the house’s numerous building code violations to the Ulster County authorities.
I am absolutely sure the only reason he finally moved on the heating oil is because, on BB’s advice, I kept stressing the property damage aspects of a non-functioning furnace: The high tomorrow is gonna be 22°! Your pipes are gonna freeze & burst.
Strategy! Intimations of property damage trump appeals to human decency with Iggy.
It was galling to have to behave strategically with that STD discharge in human form, Iggy, but I absolutely realized that crying or raging—emotionally satisfying though they might be to me—would produce no practical results.
Bottling up all those tears and outrage for six days, though, meant that once the status quo was restored, I had a mini-breakdown, and instead of doing all those productive things I had planned to do, I was quite incapable of doing anything besides eating gummies and binging a TV show called The Franchise, which is extremely funny & which I liked a lot—so naturally, it hasn’t been renewed for a second season.
I had been planning to work out this morning, but I am really behind on the To Do list, plus it is 16° out. So, I’ll stay inside & Remunerate.
###
I don’t know if there are any valuable life lessons I can take away from my six days without a functioning furnace at the height of an Arctic blast.
It’s a little late in the game to take the Scarlett O’Hara pledge: As God is my witness, I’ll never be marginal again!
I am marginal. Once upon a time, I had a business, a house, and a marriage, but I lost those things, and I wasn’t even culpable for the loss—well, except for sticking it out with the husband whom I should have shed a decade earlier.
It is what it is.
Yes, it is humiliating to have one’s nose rubbed in one’s own insignificance. Humiliating and dehumanizing.
On the other hand, no permanent damage was done & “pride” is merely a bizarre extension of the mammalian territorial instinct.
no subject
Date: 2025-01-08 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 08:54 am (UTC)You are immensely resilient and pragmatic. I wish you warm XXX
no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 02:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 03:36 pm (UTC)Power is dull, having to work around it or with it or whatever is dull. A grown man who needs to be manoeuvred around is such hard work.