The Curse

It's ironic that on Friday I was discussing with my sister the subject of our family curse. What? Cursed you say?? Yes. Cursed. **disclaimer** what you are about to read is an account of true incidents, but actual curse may be overdramatized for theatrical effect.

You see, my family has a long history of having random weird things happen to them that are just pure and simple bad luck. We have come to determine that it's really Karma's way of protecting the rest of the world population. You see, if it happens to us, it wont happen to you. We serve as the guardians of all other people's luck, because the bad luck bestows itself on us.

Case in Point: This weekend.

You all know that my husband and I dug out and rebuilt a flower bed last fall and after careful consultation with the garden center, we decided to use a particular brand of hardwood mulch that is designed to cut down on weed growth. Well, it's looked beautiful for the last few months and then all of a sudden on Friday, husband noticed these funny brown puffball looking fungi. Not just in a couple spots. All. Over. The. Mulch. We thought, Hmm...that's weird. I wonder what those are...and other random things. We went to the garden center on Saturday and bought some plants and went to put them in the flower garden and that's when I noticed it....the front of our house has all these little itty bitty black dots all over it. They look like this . Just like that little period...exactly that size though some are a little larger. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!? SO, I head inside and check my trusty google website and find that more than likely the fungus is the culprit. WHAT??? SERIOUSLY??? The fungus is shooting polka dots at my siding.

You may read more about said fungus here: http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/d/d/ddd2/ I have not tried the Mr.Clean Magic Eraser yet, the soft scrub with bleach and scrubby sponge worked fairly well. We scooped up the areas of the mulch that contained fungus and threw it away. I am really disinclined to replace all the mulch as it is such a waste of $$. We shall see how the next few weeks progress with the fungus attacking our siding.

Sunday the curse continued in full and angry force. P and I slept in Sunday and got up and read the paper, ate cereal and drank coffee. It started off to be a great day. We went and bought some crabgrass preventer because the people who formerly lived in our house apparently never touched the yard and it's going to be a years long project to rid ourselves of all the crabgrass. We planted the new plants and then I went and showered and got ready to go do a floor set at Bath and Body works. I came outside to eat my lunch and talk to P who was still pottering about in the garden. He went around the side of the house and got the hose out and watered the new plants. Then he went back around the side of the house to untangle the hose. I saw him kind of.....shake the hose to try to work out a kink. And then I heard him yell "OH SHIT"....and then there was this funny noise...and some silence from him. Then he yells a few more expletives that I wont print and I ran over to see what had happened. The faucet, my friends, was pulled about 4 inches out of the side of the house and water was GUSHING, FLOODING, POURING down the inside of the wall straight into the basement. You know, the basement that we just finished. Thank GOD that P knows how to turn the water off to the house because if I had been home alone while it happened, it's quite possible that I would be treading water in my kitchen at this point.

It turns out that whoever "fixed" the pipes before we moved in, thought that it would be okay to just "make it fit". Long story short, you should never try to stretch a 90 degree angled pvc pipe to fit a slightly larger than 90 degree angle bend. Years of stress on said stretched angle and my husband's shaking the hose cracked the stressed angle right in two.

So, the family curse continues despite changing my name when I got married. It's too smart for us, it must have access to my social security number or something because it definitely is still present in my life.

The curse touches us in a multitude of ways, horses getting loose, mom falling into a 5 foot hole while walking through a field, my sister falling up the stairs in front of the entire Greek community of her college, dad burning a hole in the counter and backing the car into the garage door of the house they JUST BOUGHT that week....it's those random little "Slim to None chance" things that happen to us so that the rest of you can live awkward free and lucky lives.

I accept flowers, candy and credit cards as thank you gifts.

3 things:

That my husband knew how to turn the water off
That we own a wet/dry vac
That the rescue plumber was really nice and in a really good mood because his alma mater is in the championship game. I might have to be a UNC fan today.