am I a person or a Sims character?

It's not been the best of weeks. I was home sick with an upper resperatory infection from Saturday through Tuesday (temperature, sneezing, coughing, the works) and then, to top it all off, didn't have running water from Sunday afternoon through Tuesday afternoon. Which would generally be an annoyance, but being sick made it much worse. Thank God (and I literally do, often) for the Y family, who brought me water and groceries and called every day to see how I was and if there was anything I could do. It's so nice to have a family, and since most of them aren't related by blood, it doesn't matter that I'm not.

The water got fixed on Tuesday (I got a fun trip down to the basement of my building, which would be perfect for a Halloween haunted house, if I was so inclined, which I'm not), but then my bathroom sink wouldn't stop running. Second time this year that this has happened.

On Thursday, I mentioned to my director that my water wouldn't shut off, and she sort of flipped, started yelling about how much money it was costing, and told me to go home so that the school workmen could come fix it. For the record, she had been aware that I was without water and sick and hadn't done anything about it. (In her defense, she told me she'd had a sick grandfather.) She also told me to stay home today, as some of the cleaning ladies from school would come help me install plastic or tape or something on my windows to help insulate them.

So I cleaned my apartment so no one could say that the American is a slob and got up early this morning to mop my floors and do last minute puttering. And NO ONE CAME. As I had had plans for this afternoon (visiting the Y family, which I now need to start doing earlier in the day so as to not be walking home after dark), I was rather frustrated, and at 2 pm called my director. She told me that an unexpected visitor from administration in Kharkiv had come but that she would send the people to come do my windows within an hour.

At 3:50 I gave up waiting in disgust and came here.

I am a person. Not a doll, not a character on the Sims computer game. If you can't keep an appointment, please have the courtesy to let me know. I could have taught my classes today; I could have spent time with my friends. Instead, I spent most of the day waiting at home, not wanting to start doing anything that might mess up my clean apartment.

Aargh.

On the bright side, during the various times I've been waiting (mostly in vain) for the Internet over the last three days, I have had the chance to perform multiple small acts of kindness: dialing a phone number for an old babushka, telling a woman that she dropped 20 hryven, and showing another woman how to use the delete key on the computer.

And I have a clean apartment.

But still...aargh!