Ok…first it was Spencer’s car. It was the unfortunate loss of what was a pretty decent vehicle. But I chalked that up to “accidents happen”. If you drive cars long enough, you’re going to have some kind of accident. And I chose to look at things on the positive side…it was lucky that my son was unharmed. So what if the car was totaled. It happens…right?
Next we had the coolant leak in Alexa’s little car. It was easy to brush that off as inevitability. It is an old car…things break in old cars. I was certain it could be fixed…if it wasn’t raining. But that left us only two cars, and four drivers. We were sharing, and car pooling, and making concessions. You just have to do that sometimes.
When Alexa called me today to say she needed assistance because the Mercury had blown a tire, I was less than pleased. In fact, I was downright frustrated. I could not come up with a single positive side of this situation. I said bad words and wondered out loud what I had done to deserve such bad luck. I mean, one car…I could dismiss. Two cars…I could still make sense of the big picture. But three cars? All in the same week? There is clearly some dark force working against me.
And when dark forces are at work, they don’t mess around.
The expected rain turned into hail storms and tornado warnings on Saturday night. It was coming down in buckets when Mike and I headed out to pick Spencer up from work at eleven o’clock. Spencer ran out of the building and hopped into the backseat just as another wave rolled through. The sky rumbled loudly, and the Land Rover was pelted with heavy rain as we made our way home.
We were just a few miles from home when the engine sputtered and died. The Land Rover stalled in the intersection. Mike managed to pull it out of traffic (what little traffic there was after eleven on a Saturday night) and got out to push. I was left to steer as Mike and Spencer pushed the SUV across the road into the Bank of America parking lot. The very same Bank of America where I used to work.
Was this some sort of cruel message?
The Land Rover made four vehicles—four vehicles that worked perfectly fine at the beginning of the week only to be out of commission by the end of the week. Is that even possible? What are the odds?
Las Vegas has better odds that that!
Mike fiddled with things under the hood for a few minutes, trying to get the Land Rover to crank. It was no use. Something had gotten wet in the torrential downpour and caused a short. I can only hope it will start again tomorrow after drying out. If the rain ever stops, that is.
Thank goodness Spencer’s girlfriend lives less than two miles from where we broke down or we would probably still be shivering in the Land Rover. I guess that’s something positive. Not that I have much faith in the positive at this particular moment in time. Other than to say that I’m positive I have pissed someone off up there. Is there any other plausible reason for every vehicle I own to die all at once?
It’s like I just rolled a seven on the big craps table of life.
I guess it’s time to pass the dice.
Until the next time…I’ll be making LOTS of pillows tomorrow.