Catch a Falling Star

Sometimes everything goes wrong.  That, of course, is something that happens more often than the times when everything goes right.  Lately I have had the fortune to experience the more common of those two sometimes.

My most recent publisher, the one that was supposed to publish Snow Babies, underwent a reduction in capacity and financial difficulties.  They had to reorganize and reduce their commitments.  That meant they could no longer publish any of my other novels.  It apparently also means that they will no longer fulfill the publishing contract on Snow Babies.  Bummer.

My new car, a Ford Fiesta that I bought from Enterprise Rental Car to replace my old Ford Fiesta that was unceremoniously killed by a passing motorist as it sat in front of my house, is now in the shop with it’s own hoof and mouth disease.  While picking up kids from school, I hit a pothole on a Dallas street.  Not just any pothole, but a huge camouflaged cavern of a pothole capable of taking a huge bite out of the right front wheel.  I was not speeding.  I did not do anything wrong but drive in place I have driven a hundred times previously… though this time it was after torrential rain and a bit of nasty hail that I had no way of knowing made potholes bigger and angrier and more horrible.   I am surprised that it didn’t eat any other cars in the moderate traffic I was surrounded by.  But I initially thought that once a passing motorist, younger and more pothole savvy than me, did the good Samaritan act of helping me change the tire, that I would only have to get the tire fixed or replaced and would be happily on my way again.  No such luck.  Not only was the tire ruined, but also the rim it was mounted on, and possibly the undercarriage of the car.  It was going to cost at least the $500 deductible from my insurance company, unless something even worse happened that they couldn’t see without looking at their bank books a little harder.  And I had to get another rental car in the mean time.  But, of course, the recent hail storm not only had most of the rental cars rented, but the rental companies had lost cars to hail damage as well.  I was stuck with a rather expensive Dodge Challenger that the car insurance can’t completely pay for.  And I have no place to park it if the hail decides to revisit us this week.  Double bummer.

And, of course, it doesn’t end there.  Having kids in school is a challenge, especially this time of year with high-stakes testing going on.  I can’t give you particulars because some things have to remain private, but even really bright kids like mine, the children of two teachers, can be subject to test-anxiety and failure and the resulting depression which can prove fatal if not taken seriously enough.  Triple damn ding-dang bummer!

But we can’t let bad luck be the end-all of the story.  I am a pessimist by nature.  Nothing has happened to me recently that took me by surprise.  I am always expecting the worst to happen, and life rarely disappoints me on that score.  So I am not floored by these randomly-occurring sucker punches.  Rather, I am given that shot of anger and adrenaline needed to pick myself up and start fighting back.

I have my novel Magical Miss Morgan almost ready to submit to another publisher that I found through a friend, with a couple of backup publishers to send it to after it is rejected the first time.  I have researched three possibilities so far.

I talked to the insurance agent today to stop the hemorrhaging of money down the drain of car repairs, and though I have taken a pretty good-sized cannon shot in this battle, it will not sink my little pirate ship.

And a conference with principal and teacher and student and parent solved a lot of the other problem.  It can be an advantage to a kid to have a teacher as a parent.  We tend to know how everything works, and we speak the secret language of Edjumacation to help get things actually done.

So, no worries, man.  Even though all my luck is bad luck, I am still lucky… since there is a lot of it.