About a week ago two of my very dear friends and I were out to lunch when one informed that they had decided to start calling me Murphy.
“Uh, why?” I asked Rob. Josh laughed.
“Because of Murphy’s Law,” said Rob.
“What’s Murphy’s Law?” I asked them.
“Murphy Law states that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” said Josh with a chuckle in the back of his voice. I laughed too—it does seem as though that law governs my life.
But today was weird even for me, I thought tonight as I sat with an intense scent still encircling my head and the lights of a cop car blinding me through the rear view mirror of my car.
After waking up to silence in the apartment (which is unusual with the three of us right on top of each other) I realized I had accidentally dozed off again and the girls had left for work. I already dreamt I went to work, dealt with a few issues, was incredibly productive--- and then I woke up only to find that hmmm....well.....I was really late in spite of originally being up early. In a panic I rushed out the door and was on my way to work when I found I didn't have my work ID.
Following the initial rush to work I then went back home for the ID and realized it was in my cubicle. So I had to call my boss's secretary to get a drive-on pass thus alerting the presses the ONE morning I'm late when I’m usually very early and no one notices.
On my drive to work I see three…count em….three dudes smoking CIGARS in their cars......then I'm going 75 mph and this cop comes ripping up behind me, gives me a heart attack because I was accidentally going too fast at that section and only wearing my seatbelt over my arm at that point, and then speeds off for no reason (whew!). I get to work and rush over to another building where this biotch bugs me about using the copy room at the same time that she breaks the frigging machine and I have to fix it....and then I finally get to my desk to find....drum roll.....
An envelope underneath my keyboard with my name on it.
Inside is a note and a card with the words "EXPECT MIRACLES" on it.
What the h? I thought.
So to re-cap yesterday’s post: a woman decided to stop by my desk the other day out of nowhere and talked to me about her hypnotherapist and how her lack of creative expression is causing cysts in her womb and excacerbating her TMJ. So, I think, well....whatever...never talked to you before but uh, thanks for sharing. Anyway-- she left me the card for her hypnotherapist and included a note saying if I ever feel inclined, to give him a call. So I wrote her a brief thank you email back--and she responds with the most flattering email I’ve ever read. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or scared.
With my luck, as you’ll see, I should probably be scared.
After work I rushed over to the house where I work with an incredible 15 year old young man, “D” who is intelligent beyond his years. Fifteen minutes into our meeting a strong scent rushed into my nostrils and I stood rigid with concern.
What had just happened? What was the god-awful scent that was now becoming a wall inside my nose? Should I say anything? I couldn’t even place the scent if someone gave me a scratch and sniff guide.
It wasn’t just wall inside my nose. It was soon becoming a wall inside the house. Three seconds after that D’s seven year old sister began screaming at the top of her lungs.
“OH MY GOSH THAT SMELLS SO BAD I’M GOING TO BARF! AMBER COME BACK HERE!”
Apparently she let the dog into the house after it had been sprayed by a skunk. And this skunk must have swallowed a dead rotted skunk before excreting whatever scent from hell it lobbed onto the dog. Which then lobbed the scent onto everything. Including me.
Amber, the dog, ran into the study where D and I were working. I backed up against the bookshelf as the poor twitching animal ran excitedly around the room---encouraged by D’s younger sister R’s, hysterics. The dog lunged toward D and me but D headed it off by pulling up the carpet and shoving Amber away with it. I made for the door as I suddenly felt the urge to vomit. The dog intercepted our move so D and I headed for the front door. After we got outside we realized the skunk must have died on the front step because the scent was so strong out there we almost passed out. We then rushed for the back door again and choked our way to fresh air.
“What are you DOING?” asked D as I headed for the trees in the backyard.
“I’m going to rub these leaves all over me to get the scent off!” I started breaking leaves and crushing them into my nose. Immediately I decided that was going to be a large undertaking if it was going to remove the scent from my clothes—so instead I asked D’s other younger but much older than R sister, M, to spray me down with bathroom spray.
In the house seven year old, still-yelling R had doused herself with bathroom spray until her hair was dripping and her face was damp.
“And the best part of this is,” D’s mother said as she sprayed Febreeze into every cranny of the house, “We have house scouts coming to decide if they want to use the house for a TV show tomorrow. The scent won’t be gone when they get here.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. My mouth and nose burned from the strength of the stench but the entire scenario--- all three siblings engaged in washing the dog in the bathtub, the piano teacher at the house who thought something was on fire, and the desperate attempts at working on school assignments in the middle---kept cracking me up. Then D’s mother came back from the store with baking soda and peroxide and said:
“I was in the store and someone said “Ohmygosh- shut the door! There’s a skunk outside or something! It stinks!” Poor woman.
I left the house chuckling to myself but soon noticed the scent didn’t leave when I did. My car began to reek of skunk until my eyes were watering. At the intersection I pulled off my sweater hoping to relieve the burning from my eyes. Reaching in the back seat I grabbed another sweater and held it up to my nose. As I did this I watched a homeless man walk slowly across the crosswalk while I waited for room to turn left on a green light. We don’t have green ARROWS in Pasadena, so you have to shoot across the intersection when cars are not coming from the other direction, or turn left on a red light.
I certainly didn’t want to turn left on a red light TONIGHT—was out of good luck and moving into the land of disaster. So I inched forward while the man walked across the crosswalk (he didn’t have a walk sign—a very red blinking hand was in the way) and then went ahead and turned left.
Apparently I turned left before the guy had set his foot actually on the sidewalk because two seconds after that police lights in my rear view mirror stunned me even more than I already was from the day.
You’ve gotta be kidding me…what th? I asked for about the thirteenth time today.
“Ma’am you intercepted the crosswalk before a pedestrian had made it safely across the crosswalk,” the very short officer said as he glared at me.
Darn crosswalk interceptions.
I wish I could say I laughed and handed him my information but at that moment I caught a whiff of my own scent, felt the repercussions of not having had dinner, began to half-cry. I was certain that would annoy the cop so I whimpered,
“I’m sorry, I’m just a little emotional because I….well I just got sprayed by a skunk if you can smell that…and….” I leaned over, grabbed everything from my glove compartment and handed it to him.
He separated out the gift cards, receipts and old cell phones and handed those items back to me.
“Who is Paul Carver?” he asked me.
“That’s….that’s’ the dead guy who owned this car before I bought it at the morgue….” I sniffled.
“And why were you sprayed by a skunk?” he asked with amusement on the edges of his tone.
“Well I was tutoring and this dog…” I started to explain though now I have no idea why I bothered. What I should have been doing was asking him why he was pulling me over for that little infraction when I was certain I’d just witnessed a drug deal while I got my insurance out of the envelope in the back seat.
This is L.A.! I thought to myself. Aren’t there more important crimes to catch here? Isn’t someone killing someone somewhere? Let’s go to my apartment complex—you can get the people who give crack to their kids and the organized crime ring across the street. Why don’t you give a ticket to the guys in the parking lot right next to us who….oh…I think just shot eachother. Surely your paper and your time could go to better causes than to my driving through a crosswalk….
Of course I didn’t voice any of these thoughts but they invaded my mind so completely on the drive home I’m surprised I didn’t actually hit someone on the way back to my apartment.
What the card SHOULD have said on my desk this morning was: EXPECT MIRACLES….TO HAPPEN TO OTHER PEOPLE—and Murphy’s Law To Happen To You. Again.
“Uh, why?” I asked Rob. Josh laughed.
“Because of Murphy’s Law,” said Rob.
“What’s Murphy’s Law?” I asked them.
“Murphy Law states that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” said Josh with a chuckle in the back of his voice. I laughed too—it does seem as though that law governs my life.
But today was weird even for me, I thought tonight as I sat with an intense scent still encircling my head and the lights of a cop car blinding me through the rear view mirror of my car.
After waking up to silence in the apartment (which is unusual with the three of us right on top of each other) I realized I had accidentally dozed off again and the girls had left for work. I already dreamt I went to work, dealt with a few issues, was incredibly productive--- and then I woke up only to find that hmmm....well.....I was really late in spite of originally being up early. In a panic I rushed out the door and was on my way to work when I found I didn't have my work ID.
Following the initial rush to work I then went back home for the ID and realized it was in my cubicle. So I had to call my boss's secretary to get a drive-on pass thus alerting the presses the ONE morning I'm late when I’m usually very early and no one notices.
On my drive to work I see three…count em….three dudes smoking CIGARS in their cars......then I'm going 75 mph and this cop comes ripping up behind me, gives me a heart attack because I was accidentally going too fast at that section and only wearing my seatbelt over my arm at that point, and then speeds off for no reason (whew!). I get to work and rush over to another building where this biotch bugs me about using the copy room at the same time that she breaks the frigging machine and I have to fix it....and then I finally get to my desk to find....drum roll.....
An envelope underneath my keyboard with my name on it.
Inside is a note and a card with the words "EXPECT MIRACLES" on it.
What the h? I thought.
So to re-cap yesterday’s post: a woman decided to stop by my desk the other day out of nowhere and talked to me about her hypnotherapist and how her lack of creative expression is causing cysts in her womb and excacerbating her TMJ. So, I think, well....whatever...never talked to you before but uh, thanks for sharing. Anyway-- she left me the card for her hypnotherapist and included a note saying if I ever feel inclined, to give him a call. So I wrote her a brief thank you email back--and she responds with the most flattering email I’ve ever read. For a moment I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or scared.
With my luck, as you’ll see, I should probably be scared.
After work I rushed over to the house where I work with an incredible 15 year old young man, “D” who is intelligent beyond his years. Fifteen minutes into our meeting a strong scent rushed into my nostrils and I stood rigid with concern.
What had just happened? What was the god-awful scent that was now becoming a wall inside my nose? Should I say anything? I couldn’t even place the scent if someone gave me a scratch and sniff guide.
It wasn’t just wall inside my nose. It was soon becoming a wall inside the house. Three seconds after that D’s seven year old sister began screaming at the top of her lungs.
“OH MY GOSH THAT SMELLS SO BAD I’M GOING TO BARF! AMBER COME BACK HERE!”
Apparently she let the dog into the house after it had been sprayed by a skunk. And this skunk must have swallowed a dead rotted skunk before excreting whatever scent from hell it lobbed onto the dog. Which then lobbed the scent onto everything. Including me.
Amber, the dog, ran into the study where D and I were working. I backed up against the bookshelf as the poor twitching animal ran excitedly around the room---encouraged by D’s younger sister R’s, hysterics. The dog lunged toward D and me but D headed it off by pulling up the carpet and shoving Amber away with it. I made for the door as I suddenly felt the urge to vomit. The dog intercepted our move so D and I headed for the front door. After we got outside we realized the skunk must have died on the front step because the scent was so strong out there we almost passed out. We then rushed for the back door again and choked our way to fresh air.
“What are you DOING?” asked D as I headed for the trees in the backyard.
“I’m going to rub these leaves all over me to get the scent off!” I started breaking leaves and crushing them into my nose. Immediately I decided that was going to be a large undertaking if it was going to remove the scent from my clothes—so instead I asked D’s other younger but much older than R sister, M, to spray me down with bathroom spray.
In the house seven year old, still-yelling R had doused herself with bathroom spray until her hair was dripping and her face was damp.
“And the best part of this is,” D’s mother said as she sprayed Febreeze into every cranny of the house, “We have house scouts coming to decide if they want to use the house for a TV show tomorrow. The scent won’t be gone when they get here.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. My mouth and nose burned from the strength of the stench but the entire scenario--- all three siblings engaged in washing the dog in the bathtub, the piano teacher at the house who thought something was on fire, and the desperate attempts at working on school assignments in the middle---kept cracking me up. Then D’s mother came back from the store with baking soda and peroxide and said:
“I was in the store and someone said “Ohmygosh- shut the door! There’s a skunk outside or something! It stinks!” Poor woman.
I left the house chuckling to myself but soon noticed the scent didn’t leave when I did. My car began to reek of skunk until my eyes were watering. At the intersection I pulled off my sweater hoping to relieve the burning from my eyes. Reaching in the back seat I grabbed another sweater and held it up to my nose. As I did this I watched a homeless man walk slowly across the crosswalk while I waited for room to turn left on a green light. We don’t have green ARROWS in Pasadena, so you have to shoot across the intersection when cars are not coming from the other direction, or turn left on a red light.
I certainly didn’t want to turn left on a red light TONIGHT—was out of good luck and moving into the land of disaster. So I inched forward while the man walked across the crosswalk (he didn’t have a walk sign—a very red blinking hand was in the way) and then went ahead and turned left.
Apparently I turned left before the guy had set his foot actually on the sidewalk because two seconds after that police lights in my rear view mirror stunned me even more than I already was from the day.
You’ve gotta be kidding me…what th? I asked for about the thirteenth time today.
“Ma’am you intercepted the crosswalk before a pedestrian had made it safely across the crosswalk,” the very short officer said as he glared at me.
Darn crosswalk interceptions.
I wish I could say I laughed and handed him my information but at that moment I caught a whiff of my own scent, felt the repercussions of not having had dinner, began to half-cry. I was certain that would annoy the cop so I whimpered,
“I’m sorry, I’m just a little emotional because I….well I just got sprayed by a skunk if you can smell that…and….” I leaned over, grabbed everything from my glove compartment and handed it to him.
He separated out the gift cards, receipts and old cell phones and handed those items back to me.
“Who is Paul Carver?” he asked me.
“That’s….that’s’ the dead guy who owned this car before I bought it at the morgue….” I sniffled.
“And why were you sprayed by a skunk?” he asked with amusement on the edges of his tone.
“Well I was tutoring and this dog…” I started to explain though now I have no idea why I bothered. What I should have been doing was asking him why he was pulling me over for that little infraction when I was certain I’d just witnessed a drug deal while I got my insurance out of the envelope in the back seat.
This is L.A.! I thought to myself. Aren’t there more important crimes to catch here? Isn’t someone killing someone somewhere? Let’s go to my apartment complex—you can get the people who give crack to their kids and the organized crime ring across the street. Why don’t you give a ticket to the guys in the parking lot right next to us who….oh…I think just shot eachother. Surely your paper and your time could go to better causes than to my driving through a crosswalk….
Of course I didn’t voice any of these thoughts but they invaded my mind so completely on the drive home I’m surprised I didn’t actually hit someone on the way back to my apartment.
What the card SHOULD have said on my desk this morning was: EXPECT MIRACLES….TO HAPPEN TO OTHER PEOPLE—and Murphy’s Law To Happen To You. Again.
-
|
