You’d think God would be kinder to me. I mean, s/he’s thrown half a dozen significant earthquakes at me in the past nine months (hell, by comparison even pregnancy’s fun), and we’re being put through thousands of aftershocks, not to mention the loss of job security. Our city’s broken. Isn’t that enough?
I took on a part-time job. Just a little one. Hell, it barely even counts as a job! But it’s enough to let us have takeaways on a Friday night without a dose of the guilts – and that, folks, is a Big Deal for us just now.
A real job! Excellent idea, I thought. Beloved agreed. The cosmos, apparently, did not.
Within days (it felt like hours), our home turned into a House Of Ill. Drop the ‘Repute’ bit at the end – we’ve been so ill we haven’t had the energy for anything that exciting.
Little Miss Two – croup. Deduct one week.
Little Miss Two – gastro virus. Deduct two days.
Little Miss Two – croup (again). Deduct one week.
Master Seven – croup. Deduct four days.
Me – gastro virus. Deduct two days.
Little Miss Two – bronchio-freakin’-litis, for crying out loud! Deduct one looooong week.
Beloved – sprained ankle. Deduct zero days. No time for sympathy pampering, because . . .
Master Seven – serious infection. Hospitalisation. Deduct one night’s sleep.
Master Seven – severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea brought on by vicious, kill-the-bug-and-you-with-it antibiotics. Deduct five days.
And somewhere in the middle of all that I have to meet a major deadline in my new job and find time to write.
Guess what fell off the list? (Sigh.)
Post-script. Oh. My. God. Little Miss Two has come down with another cold. If it turns into croup, so help me, I’ll turn to drugs. For me, not her.
Am I the only one this kind of stuff happens to? Please, if life does this to you too – share it with me! Let me know I’m not the only one the cosmos is punishing. Give me permission to overdose on chocolate – or suggest an even better way of drowning my sorrows. 
