The Circus of Life

Occasionally everyone you or I know will have a run of unluckiness. You know, a flat tire along a hot highway on a vacation where your four kids all come down with the stomach flu. While trying to get into shape you crash your bike into the neighbor’s mailbox and sprain an appendage. That could be followed by a pair of broken glasses that broke when you are investigating an infestation of mice in the pantry because it has turned cold outside and the little buggers are looking for winter housing. You know the normal scrapes and bangs of life. My response to someone who gets attacked by their turn in the barrel is to wave my hand back and forth over their head to wipe, blow and scatter the black cloud away from their air space. It’s my magic fix.

As with all magic, sometimes it works and sometimes it’s all just smoke and mirrors. Well I smoked the mirrors in my house more than once the past couple of weeks. That unluckiness has found me waving and blowing above my head so much that I think I may have created a bald spot up there somewhere. The black cloud raining over my life seems to have found a good place to land and has become very comfortable living there. Here are just three rings of my circus of a life that I am pretty sure might have caused a fit somewhere at some time in your life…

It usually starts out pretty slow. In my case my glasses broke. I was sitting at the computer, writing and taking my glasses off and putting them back on over and over again.

Why, oh why can’t an eye doctor seem to sell me a pair of glasses that I can see with as I look from the computer screen to TV to a book and back again? Too much wishing, snap back to the here and now…

So my poor 12 year old glasses finally gave up the good fight and came off into my hands in two pieces. Oh I tried to glue them but the glue dried in the hole before I got them back together then one piece stuck to my fingers and, well next thing I did was call the eye doctor to get an eye appointment. So please excuse any errors this week as I can’t see ‘em too well!

Wipe, blow, and try to scoot the black cloud before it grows!

Didn’t wave the cloud hard enough because… I was sitting in the living room cooling off with the aid of the window swamp cooler as it was like 90 plus degrees. Feeling pretty good, even though I couldn’t see past my thumb. Then a clang, bang, ca-thud, ca-thud starts coming through the window from the cooler. Swell. I’ll shortened this to the fact that the 15 or 16 year old cooler had a bearing in what is known as the spider gear and that bearing gave up which in turn caused the squirrel cage, that thing that goes around and around drawing air in through the moist sides of the cooler and then push it into my living space, to go all un-squirrely. This I find, after taking several parts off, cannot be fixed so I need to get a whole new cooler or spend time figuring out where to get just the squirrel cage, bearing, gear, and on and on.

Wipe, blow and try again to scoot the black cloud before it grows any bigger!

Too late. Next the septic system that services my house decided to talk back, gurgle and spit. Swell. Very, very long story shortened, after several dollars and some sucking and snaking things seem to be, uh, moving along smoothly. Until during a shower today. The suds from the shampoo wasn’t circling the drain so back out with the snake I went and my black cloud and I stood out in the 94 degree heat and worked until things began to flow again—so far so good.

But you know what? Yes I had a meltdown as you would expect, but I bounced back faster than I expected. I am going to get new glasses, handled the septic gurgling and the new cooler is cooler than the last one… It has a remote control clicker! Ya I’m spoiled.

To top it all off after recounting my list of black cloud lined do dahs I was dealing with, I was asked by a good friend if I ever have just a normal day in my life. To that I could have replied, “Hey this is normal for me!” But I was just too “pooped” to reply. Keep on wiping, blowing and scooting at your clouds, it really is magic.

Trina lives in Eureka. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com. Really!