“Everything has a solution” July 28, 2012 Story 1

Was it Paul Revere who said, “sorry for waking you, but the British are coming?”

Fortunately or unfortunately (it depends on which friend or family member of mine you ask) the martyrdom side of my personalities, along with my natural protectionist neuroses, combined with my sociolinguistic tendencies are working in overdrive these days telling me to share my Chinese drywall story with every person I meet.

And yet my intellectual insecurities manage to suppress my natural sagaciousness every time.

“Will people think I’m batshit crazy if I tell them my Chinese drywall story”, is almost a daily dialogue with myself.

Yes I know, some of you are nodding your heads profusely and smiling broadly having long since figured out my combination of overwhelming ego alongside my lack of emotional control and authority problems stabilized by my ever increasing intellectual appetite has already led me to the batshit crazy cocktail hour.

Nevertheless, my Chinese drywall story begins last summer sitting on the beach in Florida telling my Mommy Gah (my spiritual and literal Sensei) “I can’t get rid of my doom and gloom attitude toward my business life”.

I describe my overpowering sense that something bad is getting ready to happen and yet I have no clue where this feeling is coming from. And though I have had bad, crappy experiences before (as I’m sure you have too) my anxiety is overwhelming.

I talk with my Mommy Gah for several hours about my business life and how I want to regain some sense of perspective and balance. I tell Mommy Gah,  “I’ve balanced my personal life, why can’t I find a balance in my business life”?

My mother listens intently as I describe the constant weight I feel and my constant sense of loss. I wrap up my diatribe with a question, “do you have any advice for me Mommy”?

Holy Mother of Jefferson Davis, let the question and answer session begin!

By the fifty-eighth or so question, my Mommy Gah slowly draws to a close and I look in the blue eyes I’ve been staring in my whole life and I ask sternly and without generational regard,

“MOMMEE..GAHHH, do YOU have ANNNNYY advice or do you just have a million questions?”

And in classic Mommy Gah fashion, the words of wisdom ring out,

“WeLLLLL (my mother doesn’t really have a southern draw, it’s a sweet Winnie the Pooh mixed with a soulful Appalachian person meets a Yankee know-it-all kind of a draw) you know my philosophy in liiiifffe Michele, Evvveeerything has a solution”.

Aren’t Moms the greatest free therapy and bastion of open data!

Everything has a solution, Everything has a solution, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

After enduring her fifty-eight questions and overanalyzing my six answers, after looking in the great vast Atlantic Ocean for three hours, after putting off the first Corona thinking somehow this will keep my mind sharp, after twenty-seven sighs, after thirty-two butt shuffles this is all the wisdom my Mommy Gah can come up with? Jeeez what a waste of time.

So with a growl and a quick roll of my eyes, I get up from my big bone beach chair, grab my first Corona, kick the soccer ball to my 5 year old nephew and throw my hand in the air like Jackie Gleason on steroids,

“Greeeaatah! Everything has a solution, what the hell does this philosophy have to do with MY problem” I yell back at her.

Little do I know, the “everything has a solution” philosophy will become my roadmap as I traverse through the environmental tsunami that’s getting ready to hit my world.