Friday the 13th

I'm not normally scared of Jason showing up in his hockey mask or anything, but I'm not above attributing bad stuff to the random coinciding of a number and a day of the week. Still, my Friday the 13th started off just fine, not like that one a couple of months ago when I spent 4 hours being audited by the Department of Public Safety. I'm enough over the jet lag (just back from visiting my mother-in-law) that I finally felt like I'd had a good night's sleep. It wasn't, for once, storming like - well, like Houston in July - so I was able to make my commute using actual visibility instead of sense-memory to guide me down I-10. I started a new paperback while on the treadmill, and almost, but didn't quite, lose my awesome Butterfly Creations bookmark when it fell onto the machine and rolled inexorably along the gap between belt and side rail before safely hurtling itself onto the floor behind me.

So after I finished treading and marked my place in Sherry Thomas's Beguiling the Beauty (which I'm happy to say I had fun with - I'd read good things at SBTB, but am on-again-off-again with her work), I headed to the gym showers. (Oh, gym showers. Nothing against the showers themselves - my hair has a very peculiar affinity for their foamy wash and conditioner - but even after 2 months of regular attendance, I'm just no closer to comfort with the whole blase nudity thing. There is just no reconciling my writing and reading matter with my prudish nature.)

So I retreated to a corner, attempting to dry myself while remaining somewhat covered with towels, and in the process managed to totally forget that I had dropped the drawer of my desk on my toe the night before when I was rearranging my study. Oops. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, quadruple ouch. Drying my toes has never been more painful. The middle one, in particular, was nothing but a mess of purple and black bruises. But I am, as you may not know, a very stalwart individual, and I limped off to work with barely a wince or a moan or a 'take pity on me, strangers, can't you see my pain?' histrionic.

And then at work, I was doing my most audio-friendly tasks (entering numbers from pieces of paper onto the computer. It's a lot of what I do, hence a lot of audiobooks at work for me) and was, despite my pain, very excited to start Deborah Harkness's Shadow of Night, her follow-up to A Discovery of Witches. It captivated me from the get-go, and I fleetingly thought that by taping and icing my toes, and enjoying this narration, my day would turn out just fine. No lurking chainsaws anywhere. But then... my MP3 player died. Well, as it turns out, it was just in a coma, but still, I had to go so very long, through so many papers, before it revived.

May as well have been in a cabin in the woods with no power and a psycho killer lurking outside.

I was still limping, wincing, moaning, and bruised on the way home, so I had it checked out - a sprain (I do have super-strong bones as well as a vast store of forbearance against pain. Or at least one of those things.) More tape, more ice, plenty of time to read while I waited for the x-rays to be analyzed. I staunchly persevered. At home, I couldn't walk the dogs like they wanted, but I curled up on the sofa and finished the Thomas book, sort of went to bed on time, and got up on Saturday expecting a nice, lazy, Jason-free day. Ha.

I mentioned the storms, right? Well, before the storms moved in for the day, the doorbell rang. It was a clear morning and no longer Friday the 13th, so answering to the stranger outside was okay. It was just the power company's tree trimmers. They come by frequently, since the neighbor I share a back fence with has masses of fast-growing bamboo under the power lines. (In case you're planning to landscape your yard, let me advise against this. It may do a good job of hiding an unsightly fence or wire, but it also tends to result in lots of disconcerting explosive popping and brownouts.) I let them into the back yard and went about my day. Just as the rain was starting, my internet went out. So did my tv reception. So did my phone line.

And then the thunder, and the pounding rain.

And let's not forget the people in my back yard with chain saws.

(To be fair, although they did idiotically cut the line to my phone box - which also holds those other services - they did pack up the chainsaws and go home when the thunder started.)

And then the power went out.

So I'm alone in the house, in the dark (-ish, it was noon) with no power (thank goodness my Kindle was charged up), no landline (my mobile was charged, too), no protection (okay, the dogs are giant and bark plenty, but would they really rip through a hockey mask for me? I've seen no proof of that to date.) And I'm limping.

(This was not a good time to start reading a book about being stalked by a mass murderer. Just a friendly tip from me to you.)

The power did come back on quickly, which is a good thing, because I've been eating a lot of frozen meals to avoid cooking for one and doing dishes while I await my family's return (tomorrow. Yay!) (Did I mention that our dishwasher is broken? Yes, my life, it is truly difficult.)


This sorry state of affairs continued through today, when the phone guy made it out (doorbell, stranger, back yard, repeat) to replace the line, which took the poor guy hours. At least he arrived after the daily rain storm. And although I discovered that I can't access any recorded tv content without a working phone/net line, I also discovered that Clark Gable and Colin Firth DVDs are very delightful company for lonely, limping me.

Better than Jason, anyway.