Karma Strikes Back

A black cloud seems to be following me lately and I blame karma.  Oh, not that I’m being paid back because I tripped anyone at Kroger’s in an attempt to get to the front of the line. Nor do I recall recently screaming at any slowpokey drivers ahead of me on the freeway who evidently aren’t familiar with the little black and white rectangular signs with the number “65” on them.

No, I suspect it’s because I took a cruise recently and enjoyed tropical weather while my fellow Midwestern brethren suffered through yet another snow storm with negative wind chill factors.

Perhaps someone saw a photo Vince posted on Facebook of us sipping piña coladas on the Lido deck and invoked a special voodoo-type curse on us – all unbeknownst to me.

Bad luck, black clouds, voodoo or karma - call it what you like. All I know is that since we’ve been back, I’ve caught a cold, stubbed my toe to such a degree that the purple it turned rivaled the hot pink of my toenail polish, and bowled so badly that my teammates (who WERE in first place) probably want to ceremoniously rip the logo off my bowling shirt and kick me off the team.

Oh, and the pièce de résistance?  I dropped my nearly brand new cell phone in a sink full of soapy water.

Catching the cold was understandable. I mean, I spent hours flying the friendly skies to return to Columbus with all manner of humans. In February.  Human in February tend to be riddled with germs.  And try as I might, I always seem to forget Rule #1, which is: “Do Not Touch Face With Hands that Have Touched ANYTHING on Airplane.”  It’s an important rule, but I’m so busy listening to the flight attendant give her Safety Speech, I forget Rule #1.

Okay, not really. What I’m really doing is busily shoving my bag under the seat in front of me and trying to remove my jacket without elbowing the hapless person next to me and settling my iPad into the (germ-laden) seat pocket in front of me and folding my knees into an origami-like shape so I can endure the next several hours of flight in steerage, er, coach. When I finally finish all this, I’m completely disheveled. So I run my hands over my face to remove the sheen of sweat that has gathered and swipe my fingers under my eyes to dislodge the mascara and eyeliner that has inevitably run. What with, y’know, the raccoon look in makeup application being out and all. But this is precisely the moment I introduce germs to my sinus cavities. “Germs,” I say. “Meet Sinuses. Go ahead - have a party!”

And they do. Believe me, they do. Weeks later, I’m still sniffling.

The purple toe was pure accident. Well, not like anyone would willingly choose to stub their toe. No, I was merely attempting to give our scaredy cat, Jinx, some love and attention to let her know we were sorry we left her for a week.  I was so intent on getting over to her perch on the edge of the tub to pet her furry little head that I completely miscalculated the location of the scale on the bathroom floor.  My third toe took the brunt of the hit and within minutes turned a bright pink/purplish color. Since I’d had a pedicure not two days prior, it looked like I was intentionally trying to match my toe to my toenail polish.

Not so much.

My bowling average is, er, was 124, which is not a horrible average. For me, anyway.    But bowling less than 24 hours after returning from vacation was probably not the best idea. Sea legs may be good when you’re on a ship in the ocean, but aren’t so good when you need a steady approach to throw a ball down an alley. So I wasn’t surprised to find my average drop a couple points.

Okay, I could deal with that.  But I bowled again this past weekend and, trust me, I should’ve called in sick. I didn’t even manage to break 100 on two of my three games.  And my third game was still far short of my average.

Egad. My Spidey sense is tingling. Someone is out to get me. And I think its name is Karma.  

But, I swear, the recent loss of my cell phone has about done me in. 

I didn’t wake up Saturday morning thinking I was going to dunk my nearly newly purchased iPhone 5C with its colorful green case in the bathroom sink. If I had thought that might happen, I would never have considered hand washing my unmentionables. I would’ve tossed ‘em in the washing machine with my husband’s dirty socks.  Lace and silk be damned. They’d be far less expensive to replace than my cell phone.

I didn’t even realize the phone was in the soapy water until we heard horrible crackling sounds arising from the suds, which caused me to leap over to the sink to fish it out. Expletives may even have been uttered.

Now my hands constantly pat my pockets in a subconscious search for my cell phone. I blindly reach for it upon awakening, only to find it missing from my bedside table. Instead, it sits in a big bag of rice, which is supposedly sopping up all that water.

But I don’t think it’s working and I’m not holding out much hope since it has been in the rice for four days now. Yet I keep dropping it back in the bag in the blind hope that it might miraculously sputter back to life.

I wonder if Siri misses me?  I know I miss Siri.  Especially since I changed her American-sounding female voice to a male voice with a sexy British accent. Even when Siri wasn’t helpful, I still liked listening to her. I mean, him.

It?

And please don’t ask me if I have insurance on it. I don't. And I haven’t yet been able to face the majorly expensive undertaking of replacing my sleek green phone.

So I blame karma. But probably I should apologize to the cosmos. Just in case I did trip someone in line at Kroger. Or yell at the slow poke in the passing lane. 

But I don't think I should have to apologize for enjoying tropical weather in February. Unless it will bring my cell phone back to life. 

And then maybe I'll think about it.