When It Rains, It Comes Down in No Less Than a Heavy Drizzle

You know those times when you can’t really say it’s pouring because after all, you’re not losing your home or your car or dying of an aggressive cancer in your left eye socket and your husband certainly hasn’t taken off cross-country with some two cent cocktail waitress out of a train car in the desert but life still just sucks and it’s definitely raining heavily all the same? Now is one of those times.

It all started with the return flight from BlogHer. That very same week my cell phone died. It still powers up and it will actually ring when someone calls but the screen is completely black and I can’t, you know, answer it so seriously, it’s dead to me. Since my contract is far from it’s renewal date and I would have to pay full price for any phone bought from my cell carrier I went ahead and promptly ordered a new blackberry from Ebay. Only when it arrived it was anything but new, it still had call records and appointments in the calendar and someone’s contacts in the phonebook and when I tried to have it activated on my account my fantastic cell phone carrier informed that it was still attached to another person’s account. I couldn’t use it. After two weeks of the red tape that is a paypal dispute I sent the phone back to the joker who’d sold it to me and got my money back, but I still didn’t have a cell phone. So again, yes I’m a slow learner, I went to Ebay and bought another new blackberry. Which has, now ten days later, yet to arrive. Because, you know, the pony express is all the rage so clearly that’s how it was mailed, from one state away. Now, one month without a cell phone, it’s killing me slowly.

During all of this I also came down with some sort of passive aggressive cold/flu bug thing that sneaks slowly into your nasal passages and then strikes you down for four full days and a few half days here and there. It also leaves your throat feeling as though a tiny elf crawled into it at night and scrapped away the tissue leaving only a thick layer of mucous behind. The mucous gets in the way every time you talk. Two of the four full days I was striken down were weekend days which has the benefit of not requiring one to take time off work but the downfall of stealing away the only time of relaxation one gets, which is problematic when one already feels like slamming one’s head into the wall from lack of relaxation. The other two days I had to take off from work. I despise calling in.

After that I returned to work for one full day only to arrive home that evening to find The Princess in bed with a temperature of 103.3. The diagnosis we found after spending most of the following morning in the pediatrician’s office? A urinary tract infection. That night her temperature spiked at 105.5. Another two days off work. Normally, I would love the break but it makes me feel guilty when it’s not planned and especially guilty when those two days are actually day three and four in a two week span of time.

Finally, with all of us healthy and on the mend this weekend we decided to have a little fun. We took the kids to the parade and festivities in our local small town and it was a blast. That night we took the kids back home, set them up with a babysitter and The Knight and I went back out for a fun filled night of adult festivities, namely a beer tent. Where, interestingly enough they also served wine coolers that tasted like fruit flavored ass, not that I know what fruit flavored ass tastes like, but I do imagine it’s just like those wine coolers. And honestly, even with the tasting like ass it was a blast, too. All of it, the daytime fun with the kids, the night time fun with friends we rarely get out to see anymore. We were even able to park our camper in a friend’s yard who lives just a block from where the tent was located so neither of us had to be the designated driver for the other. We got to party together for the first time in a long time and then just walk our happy asses to our camper and crash. Still, I should have known when we finally hit the sack that night both smiling and still having a great time that we’d pay for it in the end.

You see, while we were away a storm rolled through and while the babysitter did turn the computer off at home, she didn’t unplug it and the surge protector failed. We arrived home to a fried computer. If I hadn’t been feeling slightly hungover and craving fried potatoes I’d have been immediately pissed. Instead the mourning set in yesterday afternoon when I realized I had nothing to do while the kids napped and The Knight played baseball on his PSP. It continues today. I. Am. Without. Computer. Aside from my laptop of course, but I prefer the desktop at home. So I’m technically without the computer that I prefer, but it still sucks. And is topped off with some sort of mysterious itchy red bumps that have sprung up on both of my feet and ankles, I suspect there was a spider in the camper. My only consolation? The hope that when he was done eating my feet alive I smushed his ass real good.

I have been considerably desperate for this streak to end and was about to resort to feng shui or some other such hocus pocus to speed the process. Unfortunately, target is fresh out of indoor water fountains and copper statues. The clerk said something about stocking back-to-school shit, instead. So, if anyone has a spell they can cast on me, particularly one that would bring good luck, by all means. Have at it. At this point I am in no position to be picky about the type of hocus pocus to be used.