My Luck (if that's what you call it)

I think this week might make history as one of the three most traumatic weeks of my life.

Yesterday (my weekly pay day), my boss nonchalantly informed me in an email that she forgot to approve my time card and I wasn't going to get paid. Fortunately, the temp agency fronted a percentage of my pay in advance, so I got something today.

However, the advance was a normal paper check, and my check is normally direct deposited. So I spent my lunch hour driving across town to the credit union to try and head off the charges that were already coming in to my empty bank account.

I was a little late getting back, and I guess that's why I rear-ended someone a few blocks away from the office. It was a horrible, smarmy couple and their son from Michigan. They were driving a rental car, but by the way the son reacted, you'd think it was a brand new car he'd just bought with his life savings. Asshole.

They insisted on calling the police, so I waited on the sidewalk, trying not to cry while my Arby's sandwich got lukewarm and my Hershey bar melted in its wrapper. At one point my temper almost got away from me, and I found myself on the verge of telling that fucking kid what an inconsiderate, hateful little prick I thought he was. Fortunately I didn't, and I think Karma might have rewarded me.

The policeman was very nice and even apologized when he gave me a ticket. Then he helped me jump start my car, which had gone dead just sitting with the hazard lights on. While his partner connected the jumper cables, I finally got up the nerve to drop my dad's name. In a surprising turn of luck, the police officer called up my dad and then took my ticket away apologetically. What a nice fella!

That saved me the trouble of having to beg for mercy from one of the attorneys at work, which was convenient because the afternoon was chaotic as all hell. The rest of the day flew by, and then I came home and crawled right into bed. I woke up a couple of hours later with a yucky headache.

Did I mention I've been sick for nearly a week with some gross bug that's going around? Whenever I laugh, my lungs actually rattle. Were it not for the similar rattles heard around the office, I'd have to wonder if I'd contracted some sort of grave illness.

Anyway, my insurance premium will probably go up, but I didn't get a ticket and my car didn't get enough damage to speak of. Hopefully I can get through the rest of this week without having a nervous breakdown.

Now, I'm sure at least one of you three readers is wondering about the other two most traumatic weeks of my life. This one falls in at number three, and second place would go to the week back in college when I broke my pinky toe.

Actually, it started when I was bitten on the neck by a brown recluse (also known as a fiddleback) spider. I went to bed with an itchy neck and woke the next morning with a sore whelp as big in diameter as a baseball.

I don't know if it was the spider bite, the Dial body wash my doctor recommended, or the stress of house-sitting with an itchy, highly annoying dog that week...but something caused me to break out in hives. Terrible, terrible hives.

After three doctor visits and a round of steroids, I did what I should have done first and took some benadryl. Then I went to my closet to put on my shoes and go feed that damn dog one last time. That was when, dopey from the medicine, I ran into the door frame of the closet and broke my pinky toe.

You know, I never even noticed that little toe until I broke it. Apparently it's just as important as the other toes for walking, and there's really no good way to put a splint on the pudgy little thing.

But that was nothing compared to the week after my darling cat Sunshine had emergency butt surgery...and then another butt surgery to fix the previous one. It wasn't just that I had to clean her butt stitches morning and night...it was the way she screamed at me every time, like I was trying to kill her...and the way she started foaming at the mouth every time I tried to give her the antibiotics, and the way the slobber collected inside that stupid e-collar...

I hated everyone that week, passionately and without exception.

When the weekend came, I had to board Sunshine at the vet for a few days, as I was going home for Christmas and she still needed medication twice a day. When they took her back to the treatment room and I could hear her screaming all the way up front (as per the usual), for once I didn't cringe and cover my ears.

No, I leaned back in my chair and laughed, thinking "she's their problem now."

And then I got the hell out of town...which sounds like a pretty good idea now, actually. I haven't seen Ryan in nearly two weeks, and after the week I've had, nothing can cheer me up like heading to OKC for a quiet weekend with my awesome boyfriend and his little orange tabbies.