Jan. 22, 1997
"No good deed goes unpunished."
Ever noticed how disasters tend to come in bunches?
I left work Friday after putting our weekend paper out feeling downright bubbly, intending to spend the weekend putting the final touches on my first book and tooling around town in the car I was kinda hoping to have out of the shop.
I plopped down at the computer desk shortly after I got home Friday, slipped the diskette into the drive, and turned on the monitor.
The monitor, of course, blew up.
Disappointed, I nonetheless plowed ahead with several other projects which had been sitting on back burners since I first moved to Katy; that is, I finished the unpacking job I'd started two months ago.
The phone rang. It was my stepmother in Ohio, telling me my Dad was in "pretty bad shape." Most of the rest of the evening was spent getting in contact with the rest of my scattered brothers, making arrangements in the event we needed to make a quick rush to Ohio.
Fortunately, the phone rang again early Saturday. It was my Dad; he'd gotten much better during the night, and he was planning to head home later in the day. Needless to say, my anxiety level dropped several notches.
Not long after came the news the repairs my car needed would be roughly double its market value. Considering the car is old enough to get a driver's license itself, it didn't take a whole lot of creative math to determine I'd be better off junking it. In any event, I was afoot for the rest of the weekend.
Saturdays are normally reserved for playing Dungeons & Dragons in my household, so I had to call up the others in our little group and let them know I was kinda forced into volunteering to "host" the game this week.
A quick cleanup produced a bag of trash which needed to head to the dumpster. Both chihuahuas kinda let me know they needed to go check out that dumpster, too.
We got downstairs and I emptied the trash as Smedley and Rusty did their thing. Unfortunately, we forgot to recon the region first, because my neighbor was walking her Dalmatian at about that time.
Smedley attacked. The Dalmatian, seeing a furry new playtoy, grabbed him by the head and set off downfield. When I pried my little warrior away, I had to massage his chest and give him mouth-to-snout to get his heart and lungs going again; he'd been literally scared to death.
Fortunately, he wasn't seriously injured despite the heart stoppage; the vet said he had no broken bones, no bite marks, just some good bruising, shock and probably a concussion. I had a heart attack myself when I got the bill for $112 worth of X-rays and exams, but the ungrateful pooch steadfastly refused to perform any CPR on me.
At any rate, 101 Dalmatians will NOT be a movie we rent any time soon.
As you might can imagine, I truly dreaded showing up at the office Monday, by now sure that Murphy's Law was stalking me. Talk about a "Blue Mundy."
When the fax arrived from my publisher about the book, I most definitely did not want to read it. Then I got to the line about "...the book can be a winner..."
Later in the day came word the deal had gone through on the truck I'd made a bid to buy, hoping my puppy-dog eyes would carry more weight than what I considered my sagging credit. I'm no longer driving a tank.
And to top it all off, when I dragged it home Monday night, Smedley was waiting for me at the door, still a bit muddled but tail wagging like a helicopter's main rotor.
Disasters come in bunches — and
sometimes good things do, too.