Disastrous!

I had an amazingly disastrous weekend last weekend, and I have to share it with you all, because it is so ridiculous, it's funny.

As a preface to the story, Ben was out of town all weekend with the PSMC board retreat, so I took in all this disaster on my own. Literal misfortune struck first when I got home from work on Friday, and there was a message from Visa saying that someone had helped themselves to my debit card number and went on a shopping spree at a Wal-mart in South Carolina, to the tune of over 500 dollars. So, they told me all the steps to take to fix that situation and I went on my merry way.

Come Saturday, my plans for the day were totally skewed for a variety of reasons, but this was no big deal and no big surprise. As I was grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon, I noticed that Hatch chiles were on sale at the store, and they are supposed to be a big, once-a-year kind of produce, so I figured I'd give them a try. Upon returning home, I read up on these chiles online, and it said that they are fantastic when roasted, (but that you should wear gloves when handling them and keep your hands away from your face). Needless to say, I did not wear the gloves, trusting myself to be "careful" and wash my hands a lot, which I did. Unfortunately, it turns out that the capsaicin in the chiles is more resilient than that. For the rest of the evening, I had burning sensations all over my hands and face.

I had gone out for supper for the evening (at a fantastic Brazilian steakhouse for a friend's birthday), and when I returned, things started to go swiftly south. When I got back at 9:45 PM and greeted the dogs who were thrilled to see me, there was a message on my answering machine from a member of my worship team saying she was sick and wouldn't be able to sing the next morning. This wouldn't be an issue, except that we had already only had 3 people on the team altogether for the week, one of whom has only been at the church for a month. So, after this person was out, it left me and the new guy. On top of that, it was Communion Sunday, and so we were doing a LOT of music! After calling a few people who I didn't feel terrible about calling so late on a Saturday night (and getting turned down by all of them), I figured I should just check my email, call it a night, and deal with it in the morning.

When I got to my laptop, which was sitting on the floor in the dark living room, I noticed that it felt funny, but I figured I must have gotten it greasy when I was using it in the kitchen, which I often do (I know, I know, totally not kosher). However, then I got suspicious, and turned on the lights, and discovered that one of the dogs had PEED on my laptop!!!!!!!! I was absolutely beside myself. When I calmed down, (and cleaned it off) it occurred to me that I probably shouldn't even try it until it had dried out altogether, so I just went to bed in hopes that the morning would treat me better. (But not before I had literally bleached and then soaped my hands, in hopes of finally ridding myself of all the spice on my hands.)

I got up Sunday morning and took the dogs for a walk (they were jerks to every other dog they met) ate breakfast, and then decided to try and fire up the old laptop (hoping it wouldn't literally fire up!) I pushed the power button with fear and trepidation and.....nothing happened. Tried again. Nothing. ANGUISH!!!! I could not believe that my laptop had gotten fried by dog pee!!! (I was mostly distraught at the thought of losing all my pictures and school files.) However, then I calmed myself, and thought that maybe, if I was "lucky", it had only ruined my (brand new!) battery. So I got my old battery (which only holds a charge for an hour or so), and tried it out, and sure enough, we were good to go. However, it was still frustrating that this was a $70 emptying of the bladder by the dogs.

Before church, I decided to try out my contacts which had been bothering my eyes the previous week, but I had let my eyes rest for a couple days, and figured I'd be good to go. I put in the first contact, and my eye nearly exploded into a bright red mess, as I realized that bleach is not enough to kill the spiciness of a pepper!!! So, not only did I have a blazing red eye with a contact searing in it, I had to stick my finger in my eye again to get it out! After quickly doing that, and putting in every eye drop in my cabinet, I headed off to church to do a duet for the entire service.

After this, things started to perk up a little. My eye didn't stay a burning mess all morning, our duets actually sounded pretty darn good, Ben showed me that my battery was not fried, but just really, really, really, dead and only needed to be charged a good, long while, and eventually the chile spiciness must have worn off :-) But for a while, I couldn't help but be amazed at how so many things were thwarting my plans for a calm, refreshing, relaxing weekend :-) Hope you all have a much better weekend!