Hey, Universe! Yeah you! BITE ME.

Yes, I know that’s kind of a strange way to start off the New Year, by essentially spitting in the face of the universe, but it’s the new year that prompted this, really. Because I kept having all these people tell me something along the lines of “wow, 2008 really sucked for you, huh? Bet you’re glad this year is over!” And I’d wonder why I didn’t really think that 2008 was all THAT much crappier than usual. Why I wasn’t bowed down and crushed by the fact that 2008 was so much worse than my usual halcyon, bucolic existence of sunshine and roses. Oh sure, the Big C kind of puts a huge honkin’ damper on things, and that did take things to a new level of suckiness, but when you look at 2008 in the pantheon of all the other crappy years I’ve had in the recent past? Ech, some of then aren’t too far off. Let’s review years past, shall we?

– There's the obvious - this year, with the cancer, the bike crash, the brain injury, and yes, the POISON IVY. Thought that's still kind of funny. But overall, the 0.6% chance of someone my age getting cancer? That sucks ass.
- Assclown slams into my car on I-55 while I’m driving back after a triathlon, causing a multi-car pile-up and shutting all lanes of traffic. Car destroyed.
– My sweet little Huddy died in 2007. This crushed me.
– Deadbeat renter Katherine Hart skips out on rent, trashes the place so I have a hard time renting it out. That’s what I get for being a sucker. See you in small claims court, bitch.
– Dad dies in 2002, unexpectedly. Mom sells the house I grew up in, Idiot Brother moves into the family summer home in Wisconsin, ensuring that it’s a PITA when anyone else wants to go up there.
– The trifecta week, where a friend actually looked at me wide-eyed and said maybe I really WAS cursed: big job woes, computer dies, bathroom ceiling collapses because of an unknown water leak when my building’s 95-year-old pipes turn to crap on MY watch.
– Other computer dies, just when I need it.
– Another flood, in the basement this time. Of course, it happens when I’m out of town. Joy.
– I graduate from Wharton, top of the world and all that crap, and on my drive home back to IL, am in a car accident that involves road work and semis and their asinine driving that only partially crushes my car. Lucky me.

This is of course only the bigger stuff. My life is replete with garden-variety bad luck, like last week when I stopped by Starbucks on the way home from the dogpark, as usual, to get myself a coffee and Kona a petite scone, and am in there less than 3 minutes and come out to find a ticket on my car for parking too close to a hydrant. Bastards. But that’s what my life is like. One grain of salt in the wound after another. My iPod freezes up randomly, and my iMac doesn’t work properly. I mean seriously, who the hell has problems with Apple stuff?? Me, that’s who. I have expensive storm doors installed that don’t work properly, windows that leak, a crack in my car’s windshield that I got on my way home from picking up a rescue dog, when a cement truck sent a rock hurtling at my car. Yep, Schleprock Inc. That’s why I have stuff to write about in this blog, actually – because of all the crap that happens to me on a regular basis.

So this got me thinking about luck, or lack thereof, and the fact that if you define bad luck as “random bad shit that happens” – which I have plenty of – and good luck as “random serendipitous good stuff falling in your lap,” that I have a serious dearth of the latter. Sure, some of the stuff in my life can’t be attributed to bad luck. Some of it just sucks (deaths), and some of it is my own foolishness (letting myself be suckered in by con artist Katherine Hart, and renting the upstairs apartment to her – but then, this is what she does, so she’s good at it). And of course there’s my penchant for winding up unknowingly dating lying cheating assholes, and being perpetually single STILL. And of course I do have good things in my life, like my great friends who put up with all my bullshit, especially most recently when I’ve taken the whole Bitch on Wheels concept to new levels.

But the rest of it is a bit much. And in trying to think about any GOOD luck I’ve had in recent times, the only thing I could come up with was the fact that we had nice weather for IMMOO in 2007, when I did my first Ironman. That’s it. No lottery winning, no great jobs or project work magically appearing, no finding the man of my dreams in a “meet-cute” whereby we’re thrown together via some improbable events involving our two cute dogs and a squirrel that we’ll laugh at years hence– nope, none of that. To which I say, WTF?? And I conclude the following:

– The universe hates me and is trying to kill me.
– I will never get the happy normal life that seems to come so easily for most people.
– I should just stay home, permanently. Never go anywhere, order Peapod, etc. It seems safest.

I must say, it gets a little tiresome when my only form of “good” luck consists of the “but hey” variety, i.e. “Well, my car was totaled, but hey, at least I wasn’t killed!” Or “sure, so I wound up with cancer, with the lump so unfortunately placed that of course I need reconstruction, but hey, at least it was only Stage II and not Stage IV!” You get the idea. So I’m giving up entirely on the idea of knocking on wood, or pretend-spitting three times, or not saying certain things because I might jinx myself. Because seriously, how would I even be able to tell?