Self-Acceptance

I get sick and tired of bullshiters.

So ... I had another great day with my college daughter. She wrote her presentation for her senior class project. I edited it. We ate together. I dropped her off at class. I helped her tidy up the handout for the class. I attended her presentation. To celebrate her accomplishment, we went out to dinner with one of her best friends.

Did I mention it poured rain all day?

After an excellent day and evening together, when we got back to her basement apartment ... it was flooding. Under her desk. In the bathroom. In the laundry room.

The landlord came and jimmied the rinky-dink pump and plumbing system. After we cleaned up the mess, and he got the pump working, the water flow stopped.

But ... ick. This place is a mess. You can tell that there's been plenty of water damage for years. There is a moldy smell in the wet rooms. It needs attention.

So when the landlord stopped back in to see if the seepage had stopped, I asked when he intended to fix the bathroom problems ... redo the floor and lower portions of the walls. Get rid of the rim of rust and deal with the mold.

He said, "Well, for the mold, just use bleach on it."

"That's fine for the surfaces, but that's not going to fix the mold under the flooring and in the walls. When is that going to be addressed?"

"Well, the walls ... I just painted them a year ago."

"That may be, but paint doesn't solve a mold problem."

"I don't know. The basement's been dry for the last nine years."

"That can't be right. Just look at these walls. They've obviously been water damaged for quite a while."

"You'll just have to believe me. The basement has not flooded in years."

"I suppose I can believe that it hasn't flooded, but there is obviously still some kind of problem to have this much water damage."

And around we went. Pleasant, but insistent.

So ... why couldn't he just own up to the obvious problem? Why not be real? Why use semantics ... it didn't FLOOD so there is no water damage? Give me a break!

If I can be real and unashamed of who I am and acknowledge my faults, then I have two options:

I can work on changing aspects of myself to live a new way or I can admit that this part of me is a feature, not a bug.

But to ignore and deny the obvious ... well, that just makes you look like an idiot, even if you are a university professor.