Freaking out in a crisis

One of the things discussed before the election was how cool and focused Obama always appeared and what kind of person should be in the White House: somebody who gets emotional and has a temper or somebody who is cool as cucumber? I think in the face of crisis a cool head is the better bet. Usually I stay pretty calm and level headed when things go wrong and deal with what is dealt to me. For example, I always have been a very focused first aid person and when things go wrong, I am a pretty good go-to-gal and can rationally look at a problem and come up with different ways to solve it. Well, this is usually the case, but sometimes I completely loose the cool and just freak out.

Having my class cancelled last week was a bit of a set back, I do not like set backs, who honestly does anyway, but I just decided to move on. Unfortunately this week started pretty crummy again. On Monday I get the lens for my DSLR back, it has been twice with Tamron, since it refuses to play nice with my Canon. I already knew it was not going to work and I was right, after five minutes it quit working - very annoying, but I called customer service without being angry and arranged to have it sent to them again. A bit later when driving to drop off J on the way to my rehearsal, a whole wheel lying in the road surprised us. Now who just looses a wheel and does not notice? At first we thought we are fine, but a bit further down the road, it was quite clear that now our wheel was busted and we barely made it onto a parking lot. Wow, our wheel was smoking, as was something else. So I called AAA, funny how they ask for your address and I am standing there shrugging my shoulders, trying to make this person in another state understand where I am, while I have enough bars on the cell phone to get a word through every now and then. Anyway, we just sat there in the dark, talking and waiting until DH and S were done with soccer and came to wait with us. We waited in a sports bar and later at night, after dealing with strange tow truck guys, made our way home. I was rather sad to miss rehearsal, but life throws you curve balls like this and so we watched Battlestar Galactica.

So today I am trying to get back into things and to take care of those setbacks like cancelled classes, broken cars etc.. I had ordered a blouse from my favourite designer in Sweden and it finally arrived, unfortunately with strange black stains. So I took some pictures and sat down at the computer to email the pics to Sweden to see what to do about this - and wondering why I am short of luck - and all of a sudden there is this loud noise, like a train derailing and the whole house was vibrating and then there it was, a great gushing noise. I was able to quickly determine that everything seemed fine upstairs, so I went downstairs to discover that the ceiling in the garage had turned into a waterfall. I ran to the closet with the water unit thingie to turn off the water and could not find the lever. That is when the cool evaporated and I started freaking out. The noise of the water gushing was very loud and my adrenaline was pumping, I was crying, upset and felt completely helpless. I ran around like a mad woman, looking at all the water valves we had and none of them did anything. Hysterically I called DH who had no more clues then me and instructed me to call 911. I went back to the closet and this time found the shut off valve. All the valve handles in this house are yellow, so why is this one, in this tiny dark closet, black? The most important one in the house? And why did I not find it in my panic, even though I knew it was there? To be honest, I am still a bit shaken and I am not looking forward to the mess, chaos and costs this will produce in the aftermath. At least DH will get a good workout while charging out crank-flashlights as there is no power in the bedroom, being on the same circuit as the garage and water is dripping from the outlets, yikes.

Sometimes very stupid things happen and this is one of those, instead of closing the garage door we came through, DH opened the other one and a night with both open was enough to freeze a pipe. Oh well, it could have been so much worse. It is upsetting to me though, how I lost my cool and just freaked out. It appears that there are two things that do this, water and fire. I cannot stand it though, being a person that has a strong need to be in control. Strange though how much can go wrong at some times, I wonder if this is some kind of test or is this just fate? And why do I loose my compass when I need it the most urgent?