Broken mirror???

These last few days I have had a string of bad luck.  Some little, some a chain of unlikely events leading to something negative.  I can't help wondering if it's that mirror the cats broke.

Take for example the following events:

Number 1.

My son had an appointment with his psychiatrist.  The Friday before the appointment he knew that he would not make it to the appointment but he did not act upon that knowledge and left it to the last minute (or day).  On that day, his receptionist called and left a message on my home phone after I left for work and on my cell phone.  My cell, every once in a while turns off without warning. It doesn't do it every day, maybe once a week, but it did on that day so I missed the call.  After my phone was turned on, the message was not delivered to my phone (not until the next day)  This problem with my carrier's server happens maybe 2-5% of the time. I did not get the message on my cell, nor did I get the message at home as I picked up my son at his school and did not go home until after the appointment.

Because I am low on approved time off, I asked for the bare minimum.  On my way to the appointment, I was delayed by an accident on the road making me arrive at the appointment in the nick of time.  As the appointment was at 4 PM, it was the receptionist's end of shift so he had already closed his system, so did not check our appointment and assumed everything was fine, leaving a message with the doctor (on his VM) that we were there.  After 50 minutes, tired of waiting and getting hungry, we left.

As you can all attest, there were many opportunities for me to not have been stuck waiting 50 minutes uselessly, but a domino of events prevented me from finding out vital information on time.

Number 2.

This event is not as unlikely as the one above, but it does fall under the unlucky / stupid scenario.  As you know we have many cats.  The cats decided to pee on our spare mattress, so I needed to clean it.  I removed the covering and put the foam outside for over a week to aerate and dilute the cat urine (as it had rained and snowed on it, therefore cleansing it a bit).  Last weekend, I was bringing the mattress inside with my daughter.  I selected my comfy "basement" shoes" and went outside to get the mattress while my daughter stayed on the stoop to pick it up from there.  As I went to the yard to pick up the mattress, the shoes got wet, reducing their grip to 0%.  My daughter's shoes either stayed dry or kept their grip.  Going down the basement stairs, my right foot shot out from under me as the stairs are merely painted and have no anti-skid effect.  I somehow managed to grab the banister to prevent myself from propelling down the stairs, puling my daughter along for the ride and crashing on the cement basement floor below, possibly cracking our skull.  The banister held, to our great surprise as it it broken, and I fell on my foot.  All overweight of me fell on my foot.  To do so, my knee and ankle twist at an unnatural angle.  The knee only bruised slightly but the ankle got a bad sprain.  It twisted in and up with all of my weight on it.

I guess you could consider this lucky as I didn't kiss the basement floor and crack my skull, or my daughter's, but I did have to get the ankle out of commission for 6 weeks just when I am moving in 4 weeks. This is just the beginning of the domino effect. 

Number 3.

Yesterday, when I came to work, I had that new sprained ankle to content with.  This caused some delays in getting eveything done in the morning.  I was also running on lack of sleep as the ankle would wake me up every time I tossed and turned by getting tangled up in the blankets, causing some pretty hefty pain.

So when I parked, I may not have fully engaged the parking brake.  I am not sure.  And since my car is a standard, this does make a difference, especially if you are parked on a 1-2 % incline. It's even more important if someone happens to bump your car. To help with my story, I drew a very basic diagram below:

So yesterday morning, I parked in the area indicated by the red circle.  There are other parking rows to the left of my row (not in image).  Around lunch time I recieved and email saying that a grey car had hit a Teal van in the building's parking lot.  As the email included the plate numbers, there was no doubt that this was MY car.  I struggle downstairs to the parking lot to find out my car had travelled 3 spaces plus a lane. (arrow above)  This seemed totally improbable to me until I went to the car and saw that the parking brake was off!?!?!?!!?.  I always put my brake on.  I figure in my sleepiness I probably did not pull it fully on, plus with the ulnar nerve compression in my wrist, my grip is not as good.  It must have "slipped off".  Still, the parking is almost flat, how could it have travelled so far with such force as to dent my car?  To make matters worst, the van I hit belonged to my director.  I am sure this is included on the things of things not to do to your boss' boss' boss...

This is what I figure.

• the parking brake, not being "pulled up enough" came off, enabling the car to move, before or after
• a car "bumped" my car as they were probably backing up from their own parking space (to the left of my lane).  This is a theory developped as a result of a new scartch on my rear bumper that I do not recall seeing there before. Of course they did not stick around...
• this bump would have given my car enough speed, along with the slight incline for my car to travel faster than 1 KM/h making the event harder to be prevented and giving it enough force to dent my car.
• and since the car that had been parked in front of me (purple in diagram) MUST have left for a bit, it did not stop my car in the beginning of it's travel. My car surely DID NOT climb over it or around it without leaving a scratch.

A few different things could have happenned to prevent my car from hitting my director's van.  Good thing she only got a minor scratch out of the whole deal.  No wonder my insuance guy was laughing at me.   (Mind you I was laughing as I belive in the old adage it's better to laugh than cry.) 

I have a friend at work that tends to have some really weird and special adventures.  His name is Bruno.  As it is so common for his to have these really unusual and sometimes unlikely adventures and stories, we have turned his name into an adjective to name some of these stange events,  Bruno-esque.

I think some events in my life are starting to become a little too Bruno-esque for my liking.   And mirrors MUST stop breaking around me.

Well thanks for reading!