Stealing facts to make scary story

Both men were angry with me. Their beef ? Simply, that I wasn’t mad, too.

It would appear that Husband and I are missing a significant amount of stuff our contractor needs to finish up the renovation project on our remote coastal marsh house.

We are now four hours away because the project got too loud and messy.

“Where’s the second light fixture for the hallway bathroom?” Contractor wanted to know.

“I ordered it and saw the box before I left,” I told him.

“I’ve turned this house upside down,” he insisted, “I don’t see it anywhere.”

The story was the same with new outdoor light fixtures, faucets and some door handles.

Contractor started to suspect we had a theft problem.

“I hate to think one of my guys is stealing from the job site,” he bemoaned.

“I don’t think we have a theft problem,” I countered.

“Now, you’re making me angry,” Contractor said. “I need you to be yelling at me.” Husband agreed.

“Wrong person,” I replied. Both men were sure I wasn’t taking the situation seriously. They were wrong.

I was just taking it in a seriously different direction. It’s how I’ve handled most upsetting things since reading a life changing book, Byron Katie’s “Who Would You Be Without Your Story?”

She presents the idea that when you break down what you know about any situation, you realize that you know very few facts in the moment. The stuff that gets you worked up is the stuff that we insert without knowing them to be entirely true.

Ah, yes, the stories we tell ourselves.

We’ve missed the boat on quite a few of those over the years, yes, Dear Reader?

Here, I could only know a few things to be true. We were missing some parts we need to get this never-ending reno finished. That’s it. End of story.

“Seems to me we need to divide and conquer and start ordering some new parts.”

“But what about the theft problem?” both men insisted we needed to address.

“I don’t know that we have one. I might find the parts when I eventually get back down there. If I double order, then we’ll return the extras.”

Husband went to Facebook Marketplace searching for our faucets he was sure were for sale.

Contractor went to double check on his employees.

I started combing through my email for receipts of things I knew I had ordered.

Sure enough, I discovered retailers had shipped boxes, but when I looked at the actual record, I could see only half the items had been sent. We don’t have a theft problem. We have a supply chain problem, like just about everyone else in the world right now.

I don’t know that this even qualifies as a problem. Challenge, maybe.

But with what so many others face right now, where I will eventually source our missing parts doesn’t qualify as a problem.

It will simply make for one fine story I will someday tell.