Yeah, when I was pregnant with The Preschooler, I gained a horrific amount of weight and tipped the scales at 200 pounds.  When I got to the hospital, the first thing they made me do was get on a scale which…I don’t know, seemed somewhat unfair.  Hey, your water broke!  Let’s see how fat you are!

Anyway, today I’m celebrating 200 blog posts!  Yes, it’s a celebratory milestone.

But, I’ll tell you what.  If I didn’t have bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.  I have Hambel luck, notoriously bad and often full of irony and offset by chocolate.

So, picture with me if you will, just two weeks ago when I triumphantly finished Random Contemporary.  Yes!  Let’s start editing.  Inspiration struck me mid-week and, in a startling turn of events, I plotted out all the major plot points of Random Contemporary II: Son of Contemporary.  I never plot anything.  I write as writing happens.  Look, I have too much structure in my life.  At least one thing needs to be haphazard.

Now I think I have trigger finger.

Not trigger finger as in, “Gotta shoot!!” but trigger finger as in, “my ring finger wants to turn in on itself and shrivel up and die” trigger finger.  It literally hurts to type.  At first I was thinking maybe it was some kind of dishwashing accident or strain from texting too much.  But…but, no, I think my palm is swollen.  The joint in my knuckle hurts when I hit the S or the W and, frankly, it’s terrible.  Go away, trigger finger.  I don’t want your injections or tendon releases or whatever kind of medical intervention this is going to require.  Maybe I can write an entire novel without using S’s or W’s.

Yeah.  No.

Thanks a lot of showing up right on the cusp of writing my next novel.  Helpful.

Usually, rotten luck hits me at Day Job and typically without as much carnage as my shoddy ring finger.  Take, for example, this jaunt down memory lane with my first catastrophic day of 2014:

I started out the day by trying to remain positive.  It’s a good way to start Mondays.  The first hiccup in the day, the first very faint indication that things were starting to take a turn for the worse, was when I suddenly was rendered incapable of making a conference call.  There’s no actual explanation for this, other than the fact it started out poorly and ended up completely horrific.

All I needed to do was dial a Spanish interpreter.  You had one job, telephone, one job–and that was to dial the Spanish interpreter.  Somehow I managed to incorrectly enter my passkey, so instead of completing the call, the phone disconnected.  Awesome, I thought.  Let’s just dial again.  So, this time I was sitting there, waiting for the cheerful, “Thank you for calling language services…”

What I got instead, was a breathy, “Hey baby.”

A sex line.  I misdialed by one number and got a sex line.

What the hell.

On the third attempt, I finally got the interpreter.  I was a little surprised too, but attempted to brush it off as just a hilarious anecdote to a busy day.  So, then, about an hour or so later, I had to call a doctor’s office.  The patient had given me said doctor’s telephone number.  Or rather, should I say, the doctor’s presumed telephone number.  Because, when I called the telephone number, I didn’t get the doctor.

I got a pay phone in a high school.  In New Hampshire.

What.  I mean, this on its own is a little beyond words.  They’re still using pay phones in high schools?  Sure, there was a pay phone at the high school I went to…but that was, oh, lets say a handful of years ago.  The last time I used a pay phone, I’m fairly sure, was when I was taking the trolley home from school, didn’t have a cell phone, and needed a ride because of snow/rain/monsoon whatever.  And yeah, that last sentence sounds like it took place in approximately 1925.  Whatever.

So, with all this leading up for the end of my day, imagine my lack of surprise when my car broke down.  In the parking lot.

Ta-da.

Look, I drive a mean little ten-year old car.  It’s got a lot of miles on it.  The first year I had it, we had to have the wiring harness replaced because a groundhog ate all the fiberglass insulation and wiring out of the engine.  Yeah.  I know, right, go ahead and reread that.  A groundhog ate my car engine (note: AAA will not tow your vehicle with a live groundhog in the engine.  Just so you know).  I know every squeak, squeal, and creak that car makes.  So, when I turned the wheel and it went clunk clunk clunk I knew something was wrong.

Something was, in fact, wrong.  In fact, it was seven hundred dollars wrong!  Somehow, despite the fact I drove to Day Job with no issues this morning, one of the struts had completely sheered off…wherever a strut would sheer off from.  The tech said he didn’t know how my tire was upright.  Awesome!  And then it needed new front brakes!  And then it needed aligned!

As my late father would have said, “Razzle frazzle.”

But, at least my ring finger worked.

Looking at the positive, I have Random Contemporary II plotted out.  And, guys, I am so excited about it!  It was like the plot sat down in my lap, firmly grasped my chin, and said, “Hey.  How you doing?”

Hello, plot.  I’ve been expecting you.

Of course, now it’s going to take a bit longer to write it since my finger doesn’t want to work.  Well, it works, but it feels like it’s going to snap off.  I swear, there’s always something.  Sex lines, busted cars, busted fingers.  That time a cop was speeding behind me during a blizzard so I pulled over to let him pass, and he in turn pulled me over to see why I was pulling over to let him go around.  Because you’re driving 45 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone in the middle of a blizzard without your headlights on.  You make me nervous.

As one of my Facebook friends summed up, “Only you, Heather.”

Yes.  That’s how I roll.