Call Me Lauren Murphy

It’s official. I’m changing my name to Lauren Murphy because, once again, my luck has run out and it’s been a series of disasters around here lately.

Last year around this time, I wrote a piece called, “If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another.” [If you didn’t read it (how dare you?!) or if you need a refresher, grab it here.] And because life around here has been virtually the same shit show, just with slightly different circumstances, I was going to save time and repost it, but I decided I should explain what the past few weeks have looked like in my corner of the world so you understand my new nomenclature …

Remember that four-month, six-figure, massive home repair we underwent last summer to remediate the toxic mold that was slowly killing me? Well, it may look great, but it’s not perfect. Two of the windows weren’t re-installed properly and now wasps have infiltrated our son’s room through the gap. Plus, we found a hairline crack in the glass of the biggest window in the house. How’d we find it, you ask? Because it was literally raining inside our bedroom — through the window pane!

So while we wait on new windows to be installed (and live like trailer trash, with rolled up towels on the window sills and on the floor — if you know me, you know this is killing me inside), that f*cker Murphy just keeps throwing us more curve balls. Expensive, inconvenient curve balls.

Like the shower door incident …

A few days after my oldest came home from college, while all his crap was still piled up in the garage, I went to move a glass shower door that had been in our garage since last summer (when we demo’d our bathroom to remediate even more mold) — and it shattered in my hands.

I had planned on giving the doors away to a DIYer (they were like-new and in great condition), but Murphy had other plans.

As I gently (really, I swear!) lifted it one of the doors up to move it out of the way, the entire thing broke. Correction: exploded. If you know anything about shower doors, you know they’re made with tempered glass, which crackles and pops and shatters into millions of small pieces when it breaks.

It took over 3 hours to clean it up and I’m still finding tiny shards of glass, two weeks later.

Which leads me to the tires … I think you know where this is going.

With all four of us home now and only two cars, we finally bit the bullet and purchased (leased) a third car. We were supposed to pick it up last Monday, but it was stuck in transit, leaving us in the lurch for another week. After some skillful negotiation, the dealer agreed to give us a (free) loaner car. The day we went to pick it up, our transaction was interrupted by H calling to say the tires on my car (which he was driving to work) blew out. What was supposed to be a quick in-and-out to grab a third car at one dealership turned into an all-day, expensive affair at a second car dealer, getting four new tires.

And just to add salt to my already deep wounds last week, my computer decided it had had enough. Talk about personification! #samegirlsame.

Work has been (and continues to be) insanely busy this month, with multiple writing deadlines each day. It’s a good problem for a writer to have — but only if your computer works. And mine did not. It kept freezing and crashing, and then ultimately, it just gave out. (Again, sounds a lot like me.)

Did I mention this happened the day before the tire fiasco? Not exactly ideal timing for many reasons.

In the end, I lost a full day of work and a few work files trying to fix it and then ultimately replace it with a new one. [Full disclosure: My husband is my IT guy, so he, too, lost a day traveling back and forth to Best Buy, and then setting up my new system.]

Needless to say, it’s been quite a month — and I haven’t handled it as well as I should have.

But it’s a new week now. I’m determined to find the silver linings and move forward with nothing but good juju coming my way. So far, this is what I’ve come up with:

• The shower door breaking was a good excuse to get everyone to help me clean out the garage (to make room for the third car).
• The treads were worn on my tires and I was going to have to replace them soon anyway (and most importantly, H didn’t crash when the tires blew).
• My new computer is pretty and super fast, with tons of great features I didn’t even know I was missing.
• Our new car finally came in over the weekend and so far, so good.

I’m still searching for the silver lining about the windows. All I’ve come up with so far is that it’s barely rained in the past couple of weeks and the exterminator removed the wasp nest, so crisis averted for now. Fingers crossed it stays that way until the new windows come in … or that a bus runs over Murphy before he strikes again.

Here’s to a better week ahead

— LJDT