Greetings my lovely feral, dark, and bright ones,

Here we are, smack dab in the middle of August.

How the hell did this month go so fast? Seriously, didn’t August just start? Apparently this month has somewhere better to be because it is hauling ass toward September.

Wait! Wait! I know! I know! raising my hand ridiculously high like Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter.

Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Mr. Kotter! Mr. Kotter!

I’ve been on the phones all day, every day.

That’s where August went.

Call after call after call. Something isn’t working. Something disappeared. Something won’t open. Something that worked perfectly fine yesterday is suddenly refusing to cooperate, like it has a personal vendetta. Something is buried in a menu no one can find, and sometimes it honestly feels like the machines are just doing whatever they want and daring us to keep up.

You know.

Technology.

Of course, I can’t tell you what actually happens on my calls. What happens in Tech Support stays in Tech Support. But let’s just say I spend a lot of time troubleshooting things that have suddenly decided they no longer want to cooperate with the humans operating them.

Some days I hear my own voice so much that when I finally clock out, I don’t particularly want to hear myself speak anymore. And if my manager ever has me listen back to my own calls for “coaching purposes,” I will simply perish on the spot because the sound of my own voice is—how do I put this professionally—GROSS.

Which is saying something, because I am usually not bothered by much, and I can tolerate a lot of things in life… but apparently my own voice is where I draw the line.

It is also tornado season where a lot of my team lives, which means those of us who aren’t dealing with Mother Nature’s dramatic little tantrums are holding down the fort on the phones while our coworkers get themselves and their families somewhere safe.

And before anyone thinks I’m complaining about carrying more of the load: I’m absolutely not.

If Mother Nature is throwing a full-blown fit in your neighborhood, get off the damn phone and get somewhere safe. We’ve got the queue. We’ve got you.

I want my coworkers safe first, always. The calls will still be there. Trust me. The calls are always there waiting for us like needy little gremlins.

Mother Nature, however, is being a royal bitch.

No, she is being completely and a Currently Unpredictable, Nature’s Tantrum.

Where I live, of course, we don’t really have tornadoes or hurricanes, and major power or internet outages aren’t exactly regular occurrences either. Apparently Mother Nature looked at my little corner of the world and said, Nah. Leave her logged in. Must be nice. Enjoy your uninterrupted existence, Karen.

So unless I call in sick, take vacation, or deliberately take a day off, I’m there. Headset on, logged in, watching that next call come through while coworkers in other parts of the country are dealing with tornado warnings, storms, power outages, and whatever fresh nonsense the weather has decided to throw at them. Meanwhile I’m over here like, “Oh no… it’s slightly cloudy. Better emotionally prepare.”

I’m one of the ones who’s just…there.

And somewhere in the middle of thinking about that, I realized something kind of funny—funny in the “ha ha” way, not the “oh cool, existential crisis at 2:17 PM” way—about being the person who’s always there.

People get used to it.

You become dependable. Reliable. Expected. The human equivalent of “it just works”…until it doesn’t, and suddenly everyone is panicking like the world has ended because the coffee pot is blinking.

Your presence becomes part of the normal background noise of everybody else’s day. Like the hum of the fridge. Or that one coworker who always sighs dramatically before opening Outlook.

And you don’t even notice it happening at first. It’s not like there’s a dramatic soundtrack or a flashing neon sign or anything helpful like, Hey idiot, this is a meaningful life realization, please prepare your emotions accordingly. It just kind of…slips in when you’re not looking.

Until I had a thought that hit me considerably harder than anything in a paragraph about Tech Support had any damn right to:

Sometimes I wonder if the people who are always there become the easiest people to forget to notice.

Well.

Fuck.

Of course my brain decided this was the moment to drop an emotional grenade. I was just trying to figure out where the hell August went, not accidentally stumble into a full-blown existential crisis before lunch.

But apparently my brain, the universe, and the Goddesses got together without consulting me and decided:

She’s turning 56 in four days. You know what? Let’s clear out the last of the bullshit before her birthday.

Oh.

We’re doing this NOW?

Apparently so.

No easing into it. No gentle little nudge. No nicely organized list of unresolved shit presented in alphabetical order.

Nope.

READY FOR THE BIG FLUSH?

Here goes EVERYTHING.

Old friendships. Loneliness. Belonging. Being remembered. Being forgotten. Wanting to be chosen. Grief. Mom. Birthdays. The past. The present. Who I was. Who I am. And apparently who the hell I’m becoming.

All of it came bubbling up at once like somebody pulled the plug on forty-something years of emotional plumbing.

Fantastic.

Exactly what I had planned for the weekend.

So…more to come, folks.

This one is going to be long, and rather than hand you a blog post requiring snacks, hydration, and an intermission, I’m breaking it into parts.

Consider this Part One.

The toilet has officially been flushed.

Stay tuned.

Apparently we’re about to find out what the hell was clogging the pipes……..