I had a very interesting day yesterday. In fact, it's been an interesting week.
Let's see, I think my husband got the ball rolling on Sunday night, when he almost set the house on fire. He was making popcorn the old-fashioned way--in a big pot, heating the oil first--and he turned the heat up too high. We have a gas cooktop, so when he took the lid off the pot, a bit of grease popped out, hit the flame and--WHOOSH! There is a good side, though: when we remodeled the family room six years ago, I chose a shade for the walls which I thought was going to be bluish gray, but which turned out to be more powder-room blue. I've never liked it and now, in one corner at least, the walls are the kind of smoky blue I originally envisioned. I do not recommend this decorating method, however. It makes the children scream.
Okay, then, yesterday: It's about 9:30 a.m., and I'm sitting in my doctor's office, waiting to talk to someone about my neck (which has sprouted not one, not two, but THREE discs which are in the process of herniating, and let me be the poster child for all you people who think that proper desk ergonomics is a silly waste of time). I'm flipping through a magazine when I become aware of the fact that a man immediately to my right is talking to the receptionist, and that he and she are not communicating well. It seems he had a balance on his bill, the insurance company is giving him a hassle, he's between jobs....it's a mess. I thought, Poor guy--I mean, this is a doctor people don't go to see unless they are in pain, and medical insurance companies, in my opinion, are Satan's representatives on this earth--but I kept my eyes glued to the page because that's what one does when one is shamelessly eavesdropping. Suddenly: WHAM!--a computer screen goes flying past my head. A phone goes flying past my head. I turn--all this happened in a split-second--and see the man with his feet off the floor, lunging across the desk trying to get at the receptionist. It wasn't the violence per se--the doctor came out instantly, the cops were called, the man immediately backed off--but the speed with which a quiet conversation became an assault. I never saw it coming, and I'd been listening. An hour later, long after I'd left the doctor's office and life there had gotten more or less back to normal, I was still shaking and felt myself near tears. That seemed like an exaggerated reaction, even to me. But then I figured out that the sudden flip from conversational to violent reminded me of certain events of a bad, a really really bad, relationship I'd been in quite a few years ago. Funny: it took my mind a good hour and a half to figure out the connection, but my body had remembered instantly.
Okaaaaaay, then. Back home, take a few deep breaths, talk to a friend, get calm again. The day passes. I work, I clean the house, I do the usual stuff, and at about 6:30 or so I am sitting in a chair right beside the family room window with my six-year-old daughter in my lap. A thunderstorm had been through a few moments earlier, but it had passed, and it looked as if the sun was going to come out again any minute. We are watching a DVD (and tickling each other) when suddenly--CRACK!--and I see a bolt of fire out of the corner of my eye. Suzanne screams in terror and flees to the other side of the room. I scream, too, and realize almost instantly that a bolt of lightning has just struck something outside the house. At first I thought, The transformer box--but no: the lights are still on, the TV is still working. (It turned out the lightning totally fried our fiber optic connection). I had to spend quite a few minutes calming Suzanne down, and calming myself down, and assuring myself that nothing was on fire. But finally both of us get calm again (Suzanne still whimpering), and we go back to our DVD. I am sitting there thinking, wow, that lightning bolt couldn't have been more than five feet away from us; thank God we hadn't gone outside...and then I start to wonder: where is David? He and Rebecca had gone out a couple of hours earlier. I had my usual thought--They've been in a car accident--and immediately chastised myself for catastrophizing again (it's a habit you get into when you get depressed, and it's hard as hell to break even after you've stopped feeling depressed)...but time passes, and no David.
Finally, finally, the door opens, and it's David and Rebecca. And David says, "I've been in the worst accident I've ever been in, and I think the car is totaled. We walked home."
He'd taken a corner a little too fast, and the streets were still wet from the rain, and he hit a fire hydrant. (We're not sure, but we think the hydrant may have been drunk--it just came out of nowhere.) No damage to hydrant, no damage to either David or Rebecca, but one whole side of the car is pretty wiped out.
All this in one day, not counting the Popcorn Incident. I am really ready for some boredom now.