Losing Streak

It all started around 8:00 two nights ago. I opened the medicine cabinet above the sink and out came a bright pink bottle of nail polish that promptly exploded all over the sink, spilling over onto the counter top, down the front of my shirt, and onto the floor.

After the clean-up, while battling an acetone-induced headache, I tried to put La to bed and she pulled the, "I don't want to sleep in my room ALL BY MYSELF!" And I was all like, "Dude. Think of our condo as one large room that has a couple of walls. See? We sleep in the same room. NOW GO TO SLEEP!" 

She didn't buy it. She did, however, get out of her bed, crying "I don't WAAANNNA sleep in my room" twelve more times throughout the night. 

Oh, the joy.

(Grandma Fern: I know what you're thinking. "Sounds like someone I know." Right? This is payback for the time I stayed with you for a week when I was five and pulled the same exact crap all week long. I apologize profusely for doing such a thing. I never knew it would cause so much damage and haunt me for the rest of my life. Or at least for the past 4 and 1/2 years.)

And THEN, I kept waking up all night because I was slow-cooking some vegetarian chili for a "Chili Cookoff" at work. I had an awful feeling that the crock pot would somehow burn my house down in the middle of the night. So, collectively – between the chili and the child – I did not sleep at all that night.

The next morning, I woke up early so I could drop La off at school and get back to my place, grab the chili, and meet Aunt M out front. (I thought taking chili on the bus would be a recipe for disaster, so I opted to hitch a ride to work with M) ... Surprisingly, I was running early. I stood outside on the sidewalk holding a Charles Shaw wine carton (the kind with the two cut-outs on each side that function as "handles"), which held my crock pot full of chili. As I stood there waiting for M, (I am still utterly baffled at how this could have happened), ONE OF THE HANDLES BROKE. Within a single millisecond, the left side of the box containing my precious concoction had SWUNG DOWN while – simultaneously – the OTHER HANDLE BROKE. The box landed on its side, smacking the sidewalk violently, and spilling 2/3 of the chili out onto the grass.

I stood there and stared at the mess, thinking for a moment that this cannot be happening. I must be having a nightmare.

After loudly letting out the worst curse word that my brain could materialize at 7:40 a.m., I then began recovering the small amount of chili remaining within the now-dented crock pot.

I ran upstairs and dumped a whole can of tomato sauce into the remains. Prior to the accident, the chili had contained the following: tomatoes, black beans, kidney beans, garbanzo beans, a fresh jalapeno, green bell pepper, sweet corn, 5 cloves of garlic, properly-proportioned spices, etc. When the canned sauce went in, the chili became tomato soup with a few chunks floating around. Then I poured half a bottle of chili powder and some salt and pepper into the dented pot and dashed back out of the house.

When I got into the car, I immediately started bawling and did not stop until I was almost at my office. M kept whispering sweet nothings to calm me down ... like, "It's okay! It will just be extra tomatoey ... Yum!" And by the time I got to the office, I realized that it really was not the end of life as I knew it.

Then, at 9:00 yesterday morning, after my dented pot was plugged in and simmering away at the office, I plastered on a smile and waltzed my tired butt down the hall to participate in a "decathlon" that our company is hosting. My team (creatively named Inigo Montoya by my teammate from our IT department) was there to root me on while I participated in the "trash can toss." There were eight trash cans spaced evenly apart, and I had to stand at the end of the row and throw a wad of trash into the first can, then the second, then the third, etc. All eight teams had a representative, and the whole office was there to watch their teammates participate. It was rather exciting and uplifting after the whole chili incident.

– until –

... I became THE ONLY ONE who did not get the trash ball into THE SECOND can. I under-threw. It landed between the first and second can. (Which was a whopping two feet away from my feet.)

And then I was all, "Excuse me while I go curl up and die in the corner."

But, instead of curling up and dying, I simply smiled at everyone (I'm such a gracious loser) and waltzed back to my desk to cry a little more.

Oh well. There's always the M&M race next week.

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On a lighter note, my little brother is a ROCK STAR! (again)

He received an award for academic excellence, which was only given to ten athletes in his entire school. The dude got a 3.8 GPA during baseball season. Rock on, Smarty Pants. Rock on.