Bills, Bills, Bills

This week (it's Monday), it appears I suck at adulting. Washing dishes, paying bills, it's all got the better of me and I just don't want to do it. Instead, I want to throw my fists in the air and scream NO at the top of my lungs and then kick my legs back and forth in a frenzied rage. Then I want people to walk past me without paying me any mind.

I got to the end of today after a big whole-school event that I've run and realized two things: 1. Is it really only still Monday?  2. NO! The event went well but the gallons of adrenaline coursing through my veins stay with me hours later.

So upon arriving home, I wanted to quaff wine in a darkened room with the dulcet tones of Sade soothing me into a semi-comatose state of forget. Instead, for the second time in the last seven days, I arrived home to an A4-sized overdue bill pasted to my door. With myriad characters, numbers and a sign that resembles a gas flame, I can only hope it's my gas bill and not a BBQ someone ordered to my address and expects me to pay for.

There are multiple kickers to this situation. Most importantly, I cannot read this gas bill. The website I am directed to has an English site that reads 'error' when I try to navigate. Slightly lower on the totem pole is that  I never received a bill in the first place. This is not the first time. With no key to open it, the door to my little postbox flutters open and I suspect one of my neighbors is playing a mean trick on laowai me. Or perhaps, it's the fact that I will receive a bill for next month that makes no mention of this month's unpaid bill. Because that's not how Chinese bills roll. But that won't stop them from shutting off my gas unless I pay online with the AliPay account I can't set up because I can't read Mandarin. Or go to the office by Friday at 4pm which is impossible because I have a job that takes over every waking moment of my life. And on and on and on.

I have no right to be angry. I can't read (or speak) Chinese with any level of efficiency and I'm living in China. And yet. Right now, it all fills me with uncontrollable, screaming at the top of my lungs, rage. Which is, of course, the cue for my upstairs neighbour to start practising his violin.