Catching Up Is Hard To Do

Regular blog maintenance has fallen off here at Belben’s Building Blog, due to an assortment of other activities clamoring for my attention. Thankfully, the action has died down a little and I can get back to documenting my growing homestead. I am happy to report that I survived my role as Ms. Sheena Brannigan in the BEHS musical, “Back to the 80s;” I’ve recovered (mostly) from financial woes brought about by an error at the bank; my mother has returned from the hospital with a shiny new hip, and I’ve lived through yet another change of address, leaving behind the indescribably greedy and unreasonable snots at Apex Management and the crazy neighbor next door who once woke me up at 3 a.m. screaming at his girlfriend, “You f---ing pissed on my f----ing barbeque, you f---ing b-----!!!”

Comfortably ensconced in what I hope will be my last temporary residence before the BM, I finally have some time to reflect on things like whew! I finally have a front door! instead of figuring out which cardboard box/storage unit/friend’s house contains my black skirt/hair dryer/cheese grater. Inspired possibly by my participation in the aforementioned theatrical production, I’ve been thinking lately about story-telling. A 19th century French writer named Georges Polti is credited with describing the 36 possible situations that can occur in stories, and with an OCD-esque flair, carefully explicated each one (see sidebar and links for exhaustive details). I'm fairly certain that at least half of these situations have been a part of my adventure in home-building.

Take, for example, situation #16, "Madness." In this situation, according to Polti, "Strong emotion causes powerful arousal, which leads to a loss of rational thinking...and the person loses all conscious control, effectively becoming a different person for a while." Anyone who has witnessed one of my I CAN'T MAKE ANOTHER %$#@&%$ DECISION meltdowns or my APEX PROPERTY MANAGEMENT-induced craziness can verify that this plotline runs steadily through my current world. It's occasionally accompanied by situation #34, "Remorse" and the infrequent but nevertheless gut-wrenching situation #33, "Erroneous Judgement."

Polti defines "obtaining" (situation #12) as "When one person wants another to do or provide something but the second refuses, [and] a tension arises between the people involved." Certainly all of my house-building so far has been an effort to obtain a new place to stash my self and my worldly possessions, and there is no other person involved.

My only real adversary is time. And while it sometimes feels otherwise, time is actually cooperating in my quest--the house is on-schedule. The garage floor has been poured, the corbels are nearly all in place, the siding almost done, exterior painting scheduled for Spring Break, the insulation has been installed (see photo at right of the gable in my bedroom), and soon the drywalling will be underway.

Yes there has been some situation #20, "Self-Sacrificing for an Ideal," but I've luckily escaped Disaster (#6); Fatal Imprudence (#17) and I'm not even sure I know what an Involuntary Crime of Love (#18) is.

A more fitting plotline for my project is #9, "Daring Enterprise," even though I am not "a young male who proves himself, perhaps by acts of ritual and rites of passage, as worthy of esteem and thus being allowed to belong to a higher level within the group," nor am I involved in an "adventure undertaken for the purpose of obtaining a beloved woman." Nevertheless, I feel like I've done something daring, even if the only ledge I'm hanging from is the one on the boundary between Able to Buy Groceries and Standing in Line at Food Bank.

Polti says that the Enigma (Situation #11) satisfies our need to solve puzzles, to experience a sense of completion and the reward of closure. "Resolving enigmas," writes Polti, "makes us feel clever and intellectual and hence more able to face life's other challenges." I'm hoping that I feel smarter when this is all done. I know I'll be better equipped to face challenges.