Jinx

I am cursed this week. I can feel it. Too many good things are happening. A big bad is coming.

My karma antenna first started jangling on Monday when I went out to run errands and actually got everything I needed at the first place I stopped for each item. I dropped pants off at the tailor and he didn't even need to measure the pair I needed hemmed, he just compared the inseam to the pair I needed hemmed so I didn't have to try anything on. Dropped my shirt at the dry cleaner, who is the sweetest Egyptian lady with very beautiful English who always holds my hand and tells me to say hello to my brother.

I got an extra set of keys made in case I manage to find a maid this week, since our last maid's sister got married and the whole family had to move out of the building to go do something about the animals demanded by the groom's family. The guy who made the keys was the guy who changed our lock for us when our old one was sticking and he remembered me. I got his phone number in case I ever have lock problems again and he looked over my shoulder as I typed in his name and insisted I put "Locksmith" in the last name box on my phone. Like some foreigner had taught him this word and he was so proud of it. His shop is a wooden shelf covered by two shutters on the side of a store that sells tupperware.

I went to a stationery store and bought the standard form contract foreigners use to rent furnished apartments in case my landlord came this week (which he did, but I'll get to that in a minute) because my roommate is moving out and I wanted to be the only one on the lease (right now the girl who used to live here is still on it). They actually had a bilingual Arabic-English copy of the contract!

On my way back to my apartment, in the space of two short blocks, I saw the brother of our maid, who used to live in our building and he waved and said he was happy to see me and wished me a nice evening. And I saw our plumber, who likes to rail against corrupt politicians who are stifling his dreams (he is an engineer, his friend who works as an office boy in a phone company is also an engineer, and his friend's garbage man got his degree in the Faculty of Investment and Trading), and who I might need to call again soon because the interior of our toilet tank is cheap Chinese-made plastic crap that he literally used a knife heated on the stove to melt back together the last time he came over.

So basically I started to feel like part of the community. And it really freaked me out. After being unemployed for so long, getting not-great grades, losing my health insurance, etc. I haven't been a big believer this year in good things happening to me. Okay, so I was never really an optimist of any stripe but now I'm downright suspicious when things start to go well. So I told my roommate I thought I was headed for disaster and she told the puppy I was being ridiculous.

The thing is, I am bad at guessing what will go wrong and if something big enough has gone wrong for the looming danger to have passed and karmic balance to be achieved again.

For example, I went through two laptops this week at work and then FOUR today. The first one, which I've had for five months with no problems started freezing early in the week. Then it started shutting off by itself with no warning. IT thought they'd fixed it, gave it back, and it crashed again losing several hours of work. So IT gave me another laptop while they worked on mine overnight and on into the morning. The new one shut off three times before noon. They told me it was just the normal process of installing updates and since I hadn't actually lost any work, because by then I was saving compulsively, I didn't insist on a new laptop...

Until it crashed another three times after lunch.

I called IT and they absurdly insisted it was just normal updates. I asked why there were so many updates and why the computer shut off without warning when a) most computers ask you if you want to install updates and b) when it was shutting off it wasn't actually installing the updates, it would turn back on and there they'd be!!! The guy told me the laptop hadn't been updated in several months because it was a spare. I asked, "you mean I gave you my laptop because it was shutting off without warning and I was losing work and you gave me this laptop in its place KNOWING IT WOULD SHUT OFF REPEATEDLY WITHOUT WARNING?!?!" And there was this long pause on the phone and he goes, "I bring you another."

So the third laptop, which IT hilariously calls a "floater," was fine for about four hours, when, yep, it turned off without warning. Since it had been good for most of the afternoon, I was lured into a false sense of security and had slacked off on my bi-minutely saving regimen and so lost another hour's work. I yelled at IT again and they brought me computer number 2, supposedly all updated, around 5:30.

But I'd learned my lesson. By then I'd given up on saving at all and didn't do any work on the computer for the rest of the day.

Was plowing through four computers, all my goodwill with IT, and losing four hours of work bad enough to have been the big bad I sensed coming? I didn't think so.

In my heart of hearts what I truly dreaded was the meeting with the landlord tonight. We had to tell him 1) that Marisol, who he has known for two years, is moving out of the apartment, 2) that I, who he only met a few months ago, wants to stay for at least another year at the same rates and conditions he gave Marisol, and 3) that Marisol's dog ate a Marisol's dog-sized hole in the couch last weekend. I just knew he was going to say no to everything and I was going to get stuck paying for a ton of dog damage or have to find a new place out of the blue or something.

Nope, totally normal. He agreed to everything, accepted Marisol's offer to have a furniture repair place GLUE a "piece of material" over the hole, then sat and had a beer with us, chatted, gave us some phone numbers to call if anything goes wrong in the apartment since he lives in Alexandria, and kissed our cheeks when he left. No big deal at all. So that wasn't the big bad either.

But there is one more REALLY bad possibility.

My firm has been working on this case for years. Now there are seven attorneys on it full time (five of us little guys and two senior associates). But technically the tribunal still hasn't awarded jurisdiction. It is totally normal to do this much work before the tribunal says a peep but then, yesterday, they peeped by sending a really cryptic letter that has about five different interpretations ranging from "swiss arbitrators are anal retentive about regulatory housekeeping details" to "you are the weakest link, good-bye!" Despite how much we all don't want to be working on just this one case anymore, the letter has everyone on edge and we might not find out for days or weeks what it all means.

So I have decided, as a vocational back-up, to become a mystery writer. Only I don't have the attention span to write novels. WAAAAY too long. And honestly, short stories are usually like 20 pages. That's not short at all! So I've opted for mystery haiku. But I could only scrape together a handful before I lost interest. Seventeen syllables wear a girl out.

Thus, I sign out with the following opus in the hopes that big time publishers are reading this blog while fanning themselves with extra cash they can't think of how to spend. And, knowing that my readers have a similar attention span to my own (especially so far down a long blog post), I've included the answers to the mysteries right below each poem.


The killer stabs through,
Distributes me piece by piece
With a shiny spade.
(pie)

I am crushed, smothered,
Drowned, evidence washed away.
Skid-marks the sole clue.
(poo)

My blood runs freely,
Stabbed with a sharp spear, tortured
In flames and hot oil
(kebab)

Systematically
We are counted, added, and
BURNED… to your delight.
(calories)

I am broken, breached,
Violated, compromised,
Rendered null and void.
(construction contract)


Whew, that was sooooo nerdy. Random House, you know where to find me!