Ho! Ho! Ho!

Yeah, I've been on a bit of hiatus. Christmas/Thanksgiving are usually stressful enough without me staying totally tapped into the rest of the world and all its many problems. Plus, new video game.

But these past couple of weeks have seen such a run of horrible luck that I just felt a rant was needed to get things off my chest.



Yep, we totally got this Santa bringing stuff to our house!

So, it all gets off to a rousing start when the kid picks up the nagging cough I had just gotten rid of. Lovely little bug that doesn't give you a fever or even make you particularly sick. What it does do, is start to give you a nagging cough as soon as you hit the bed. For an adult, not a big deal, easy to control. For a 4-year-old, it means everyone in the house is awake all night because nothing you do can control it. Finally, at about 2 a.m. on Christmas Eve morning, my husband look at me, and declares that he's going to Walmart to get a steam humidifier that has the Vicks in it. Kiddo broke one just like it earlier in the year.

Well, he comes back about an hour later with a weird look on his face and says, "I hit a deer." So, then he's filing a an insurance claim at an ungodly early hour of the morning. Lucky for us, it is all covered and fixable, but we do have to cover the deductible. This led to a new verse for the old song:

Uncle Jim ran over Santa's reindeer
driving home from Walmart Christmas Eve
You can say there's no such thing as Santa
but as for all of us, well, we believe

But wait! Evil Santa was done yet!

The day after Christmas, we are packed and ready to leave to head to my folks' place for the weekend to enjoy a weekend with family. We are literally on the very last trip out the door. Kid is out the door, I am following him to get him in the car, and husband is following me making sure everything is turned off, shut door, and locked. I take a step off the porch, hit a weird divot in the lawn and turn my foot completely under. Things snap, crackle and pop. I don't fall, but I do realize that I've done some serious damage in there right away. We have one stop to make on our way out of town, and 30 minutes later I'm still fighting the pain and have what looks like two ankles. At this point we call my parents and break the bad news - I need medical attention.

It really sucks trying to find a doctor of any kind to see you at 3:30 in the afternoon on the day after Christmas. My own doctor was full up. We could wait for the after-hours clinic, but it didn't start until 5:30 and is always first come, first served. By that time, we'd be almost all the way to my parents, and by the time we waited for it and left and drove out, we wouldn't be eating Christmas dinner until close to midnight. So we tried two other walk-in clinics, neither of whom could help because their x-ray techs had left at 3:00 ... So, emergency room it was! Thankfully, they were fast. An ER bill, an x-ray, gel cast and crutches later, and I am out with a severely sprained ankle. I spent all of the week after with one foot three sizes larger than the other. I still can't wear my normal shoes on that foot. My son loved it thought because we got to ride the electric carts at Target and the grocery store. Momma beeped!

But wait! Santa had yet more coal.

So it's New Year's Eve, and this time, the kid gets the stomach flu. Poor kid can't keep anything down. Husband takes off to pay the day care bill which we had planned to do as a family, but yeah, reasons. It's about halfway through this period that I notice the house if 10 degrees colder than the thermostat is set to. Seems upon examination that the ignitor has broken. This would be not so bad, except everyone closes early on New Year's Eve, none of the traditional hardware stores carry HVAC parts, and by the time we find a place that does, we can't get the part until the day after New Year's. So, two days without heat later ... and we finally get our furnace fixed.

And now, we both have our son's flu. No wonder the kid looked so miserable.

a reply to: ketsuko

I am sorry to hear about all that. Some times life can be difficult! I will keep you in my prayers.

a reply to: OpinionatedB

Heh, I was talking to an old college buddy on the phone the other day, and I told here it's at these times that God usually opens a door, or a window, or at this point he could open a random manhole cover on the street and I'd be leaping through it.

a reply to: ketsuko

So do you think this was God's and or Santa's way of telling you that you were not so nice this year? (joking)

that's a strong of a lot of things happening. Did you have anything go right?

you got all the bad luck out of the way early .. 2015 should be good year for you now ..
good to see you survived all the holiday mishaps ..

a reply to: ketsuko

Oh man....so, so sorry.

We've all been there. Hopefully things will be brighter for the New Year.

((hug))

Superb Rant and you have every right to Rant on and on and on......that is a lot of bad stuff happening all in a short period of time.
Did your husband keep the deer if it was dead? Where we live its a small award for a nasty accident and it fills up the freezer nicely.

Wish you folks all the best from here on for the rest of the year. You guys deserve a break!
Regards, Iwinder

No, no venison. That was one of the small pieces of luck. It was slick that night on the roads, so he was only going maybe 15 mph on an exit that you usually take at closer to 50. So, he did hit the deer and knock its legs out from under it, and the deer left a nice dent in our hood. However, the deer did manage to run away. Who knows? It might even be telling its tale of woe right now because there is no deer carcass out there.

If he had hit it that hard, the insurance company would likely have totaled out the car and we would be having to replace it, and of our two cars, this one was NOT the one we want to replace.

As I said, all things considered it could all have been much worse than it was.