a charmed life

We were eating breakfast. Isaac was already late for school. Again.

The computer had seized, its hard drive grinding and gnashing its teeth for several hours before simply refusing to come to life at all. On it, downloads of 50 CDs that were to be our travel music for 5 weeks that Mike had not yet gotten onto an MP3 player.

I was limping around in pain, my back on the lower right side pitched to the point of no return; relaxation not so simple, my couch already disappeared into the storage POD outside my window and the religious peddlers forever pounding on the door while I try to prop myself in bed.

My garden had been ravaged – friends digging up my blooming beauties – better they have them than the landlord's extermo-gardeners mow it all down without discretion after we're gone, though in the latter scenario I wouldn't have to watch.

My son's pretty face was marred by the gashes and cuts of a recent and terrible asphalt tumble that left him trembling like I've never before witnessed, his knees torn up by the same fall and one more two days later when he grated his skin over a climbing wall after losing his grip and sliding the rest of the way down.

Mike was wearing a brace against his wracking cough that threatened to wrench his back out if loading the POD didn't first.

My father-in-law was in the hospital again.

I was showing signs of preterm labor.

We were leaving our life in 8 days, but it seemed already to be falling apart around us.

My husband's '93 Honda del Sol, the very same we traveled across the country in when we came out to Monterey was still not sold or otherwise disposed of. However, he'd had an inquiry, a man who might even pay him $1,000 for the junker – one dollar for every day that bag of chips and salsa have lived in the center console, I guess. We were discussing having to get that deal moving when Mike discovered he couldn't find the keys. The del Sol was down the block, booted from its usual spot in the driveway or in front of the house by the VW van and the POD, respectively. “Sometimes the keys get left in the trunk lock,” Mike offered.

“They do, huh? Just 'get left' there?” I asked, wondering if this was really the time to discuss the social and grammatical implications of the passive voice.

And then, I started to laugh. And laugh. Hysterically. I couldn't stop.

“Why are you laughing?” Isaac asked me half-concerned, half-giggling himself under the pressure of contagion.

I could barely catch my breath to explain. The sound just rolled out of me, on and on, full and maniacal. “Be-B-Be-Be-Cause...Our life...is a DISASTER!”

Mike returned from the car, which miraculously was still there, with the keys. “Yup. Trunk lock.”

Ah, see. No one stole the car. The keys were found. The gods, clearly, have been smiling on us.