Cartastrophe

It's a self-fulfilling catastrophe. Sometimes I give myself the creeps. Watch your problems disappear; and then reappear as mine (Good Riddance "Self-Fulfilling Catastrophe")

Sometimes I wonder the whole the self-fulfilling prophecy thing.  I don't buy into it, but occasionally things happen that make me wonder if I'm wrong. I have long thought myself cursed.  And most of my screen names, gamer tags etc. reflect that opinion.  I generally say it lightheartedly, but there are sometimes I'm not so sure....

Today was a perfect end to a pretty terrible week.  There is nothing in particular that justifies this summation of my week--just a general onslaught of work, sleeplessness, an ill-timed 29th birthday, and too much time spent alone in my own personal hell hole. Anyway....here's the background on why today super sucked.

Two days ago, I had a day off.  Happy day! I decided I was going to clean, help out my dad for a bit and then enjoy myself. So when I woke up, I did the dishes (where a spider lay in wait to "intack" me), cleaned up a bit (though not much, since I'd been turned off of the whole cleaning thing by aforementioned dish-spider) and headed out the door to go to help un-bury my dad at work.

My car was nearly out of gas, and as I was equally out of money, I made a pitiful-stop to put my last $10 into food for my vehicle.  After doing so, the bloody thing thanked me by not starting.  I had arrived at a vacant gas station, and in the <5 minutes it had taken me to put gas in my car, there were lines forming at every pump. Perfect. So now while I tried to get my car to start (when you repeatedly turn the key saying "pleaaaaase start" cars usually do, right?)  I had people waiting angrily behind me. After a few minutes, I decided to tell the man who was yelling at me to get out of his way that I wouldn't be moving at all in the foreseeable future.

I realized I was going to have to push my car into the adjacent parking lot.  However, the guy at the pump in front of me, who was blocking me from pushing my car out of the way, was out of his car, standing by a tree smoking on and talking on the phone, and decidedly not putting gas in his car, let alone getting out of my way anytime soon.  In the 15 minutes it took him to finish his conversation and smoke, I continued to try to start my car to no avail.   

He finally filled his tank (and a spare gas can), and almost 45 minutes into my ordeal, I was finally able to start pushing my car forward.  After having to (twice) jump in my car to put on the brake because someone who was driving through the parking lot didn't care to slow down or swerve for the girl pushing a car, I finally managed to park the damn thing.  If I'd have had the means (and if the car was actually mine) I would have been tempted to light it on fire then and there, but as it was, I put on my sunglasses and walked the 2 miles home.

Thursday I ran my car out of gas running errands for work--too scared to stop for gas after Wednesday's debacle.  I asked Andy if I could borrow his car for work today, to avoid risking another stranded episode, and he said I could.  So I did.

Which long-windedly brings us to today, where, upon arriving at work :my wouldn't connect to the internet (the only one of eight computers to have any problem), and then proceeded to have other issues; the extra computer I tried to use couldn't print.  And the stapler I was using didn't work. And the copier was making lines randomly on some of the 3,000 pages (sorry, trees :( ) we had to copy today.

When another co-worker and I had to run to pick up an outsourced copy job, I made him run in to pick up the copies,because I was afraid of the car not starting (I was not interested in an encore, and Andy's car was guilty of  playing the not-starting on me).  He came back out with the copies, and everything was fine.  We had one more stop we had to make and, again, he ran in while I waited outside.  And then....Andy's car just turned off, for no reason and without warning.  And wouldn't turn back on.

The last time it had done this to me was in the same effing parking lot!!! And with another time-sensitive project in transit.  Holy god.....the fury!!!  My co-worker took me back to work, where we frantically finished our work day a half an hour after I was supposed to be done with work.

And then I got to walk home, which was a dismal thought after not eating lunch.  Fortunately for me, I'd decided to wear a long, black-sleeved shirt along with dress pants, knee socks and dress shoes to work; otherwise, it might have been a really uncomfortable 4.5 mile walk back to the car (which started without problems, in case you were wondering).

 Lessons learned:  having unreliable cars will at least double the amount of exercise I get during an average week, Mique has excellent gift-giving foresight, and I think I really am hexed.  Whether it's a self-fulfilling catastrophe or not, though, is still up for debate.