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| Author Jen Turano |
My
Horrible, Miserable, Very Bad Week
When Carrie asked
me if I’d like to submit a blog post to Overcoming
With God, I must admit that I hesitated in giving her an answer because I
was in the midst of one of those weeks – you know the ones I’m talking about –
something goes amiss, and then something else, and before you know it, it seems
like life will never turn rosy again.
Because of all the
disasters that were flinging my way- one right after another – I was fairly
certain I wasn’t capable of penning anything of worth because I was, for lack
of a better word…grouchy.
You see, it all
began on Memorial Day when I was paid a lovely visit by a raccoon – and one
that just happened to gain access to my kitchen by using the dog door – a door
that’s been around for over thirteen years and a door that can only be accessed
if a critter scales a six-foot fence, scurries across a rather long expanse of
lawn, tiptoes up a steep flight of steps, and then scoots around various pieces
of outdoor furniture before being able to get near a rather small door that
leads into my kitchen. All I can figure
is that it must have been one very determined raccoon, and one that ended up
making a very large mess while I slept through its visit, completely oblivious
to the fact my kitchen was being destroyed.
When I came downstairs the next morning, I wasn’t certain I was truly
awake. Food was scattered all about,
mixed in with my dog’s joint medication that goes for over fifty dollars a bag
– and while I did smile at the thought of a raccoon zipping back to his home
feeling in fine form with joints that had been well medicated, it took me hours
to clean up the mess. Add in the pesky
fact that I now have to close off the dog door every night with a special Plexiglas
door because the raccoon has returned night after night, scratching to get in,
and I’m dealing with an ancient Cattle Dog (Sasha) that’s incredibly displeased
with the situation. She’s never been
unable to go out whenever she wants at night, and has taken to voicing her
displeasure, howling very loudly at the strangest of times (as in midnight) to
make certain I’m aware of her annoyance.
One would think
the raccoon incident was enough trouble to be getting along with for a while,
but a day and a half after the raccoon event, my son was set to leave for
Florida to fetch a car from his grandmother’s house (we live in Denver,) and a
car that his grandmother would only stop driving if her grandson would come
take it. She’s eighty-six, and while my son
doesn’t actually need a car, he thought this sounded like a grand adventure and
would get her off the road, so we booked him and his friend tickets. The problem was that the weather that week
was treacherous throughout the country and his flight got canceled.
At four in the morning, we fired up my
computer, and while I did find him a new flight – I clicked on a fake link for
that particular airline and got…a virus – and not a virus that can be fixed,
but a virus that encrypted every file on my computer. Now, if I wanted to hand over $690.00 to the
cyper-criminals who were responsible for my virus, they’d kindly give me a
special code to unlock my files – but I’m not really keen on extortion – so
after spending hours talking to various people, including the FBI, I realized
my computer was toast, so took it off to a computer company that would wipe my
computer completely clean – losing all of my files in the process. Thankfully, my manuscripts and important
documents had been saved elsewhere, but I’d been working on research for an
upcoming series and that research is now gone forever.
One would think
that would be the end of my woes, but…no.
My web guy contacted me the day after my computer debacle, asking me if
I knew my website had disappeared.
Numerous calls and dollars later, my domain name was back in good
standing and my web was back up, but honestly…I’d just about had enough and
then…
Dominic (son)
arrived back from Florida with the car.
It’s a Lincoln Town car with only 30,000 miles on it, but it’s over
fifteen years old and the roof is one of those ragtops – and…somewhere in
Kansas Dom hit a bad storm and – that was the end of the ragtop. The car looked a complete and utter mess, and
when I forced myself to go look it over the next morning, apparently hoping
that the horror I’d seen the day before would have vanished in the night, I was
met by the sight of a flat tire. Flat
tires usually don’t have the power to send me over the edge, but when my
insurance company sent a guy out to fix my tire, and he forgot his
air-compressor, I knew events were probably not going to go smoothly. He ended up putting on the spare, but when I
pointed out that the spare looked a little low on air, he immediately took to
arguing with me, said it was fine, spare tires were supposed to look that way,
and bid me a good day. As soon as I
tried to drive the car, the tire popped, so I had to have it towed to a shop to
get it fixed.
By this time,
you’re probably wondering why I decided to write this blog since everything
that could go wrong did, but there is a good ending to all of this.
The rain stopped,
at least in the mornings, a few days ago, and stuffing my feet into my
neon-green running shoes, I hit the trail, not really feeling like getting any
exercise, but knowing that the fifteen pounds I still need to lose wasn’t going
to evaporate on its own. As I rounded a
corner, I saw a raccoon ambling along, carrying one of its babies in its mouth. Stopping in my tracks, I watched what I’d
only recently decided was my arch enemy disappear into the shrubbery, and you
know…raccoons aren’t so bad, in fact, they’re quite adorable – when they’re not
in my kitchen, that is.
Continuing
forward, I ran into all sorts of wildlife – deer, rabbits, birds, and I also
ran into many of my friends I hadn’t seen in a while, given the rainy season
we’d been experiencing. These friends
were accompanied by many of their furry friends, and I’m sorry, but a person
just can’t stay grouchy when greeted with a wag and a lick on the face.
With the sun
shining down on me, I began to realize that life wasn’t really so miserable
after all. The raccoon, although making
a mess, hadn’t done any real harm. My
computer, while now completely file-less, has now been scrubbed and is running
better than ever. My web-site is up and
running again, and…I found a lovely gentleman who works on old cars and is even
now putting a new roof on the Lincoln.
The flat tire did not happen out on the open road, but right outside my
house, which means my son was not put in danger on some desolate road in Kansas.
God, it seems
to me now, was watching over me the entire time, and quite frankly, I do
believe He might have been teaching me a bit of a lesson. We tend to take our mundane, ordinary days
for granted, not taking the time to appreciate furry friends, computers that
work, cars that don’t lose their roofs, and tires that retain their air. But, when we experience troubles, ordinary
days begin to seem downright extraordinary, and that, my friends, is exactly
what I think God wanted to remind me of– which is why I’m now off to sit in the
sun, enjoy the quiet of my day, and perhaps, just perhaps, begin to plot out my
next story.
I wish all of you
your very own ordinary, yet extraordinary, day!
~ Jen ~
Question: Have you ever had a horrible week where everything seemed to go wrong?
GIVEAWAY: We are giving away a paperback copy this week of Jen Turano's brand new release In Good Company, plus another copy, winner's choice of format, for any of Jen's books.
