My Holiday Luck

It started off innocently enough. The brake light on my car came on while I was driving to work the Tuesday before last, so I took it to my normal shop and asked them to look at it.

A couple of hours later they called me to tell me that they couldn't find a leak in the brake line -- they just added some brake fluid -- but that they did, in checking, see that the coil spring on one of my rear struts was broken and would pop my tire if not fixed. OK, go ahead and fix it, I said. $450 later, I had my car back. Not the greatest thing in the world having a major repair two weeks before Christmas, but not the end of the world either.

That Friday, I came downstairs to find the house feeling a little chillier than normal. I looked at the thermostat to find it set at 66-degrees but showing 64. So, I tried to turn it up. Silence. I turned it down and then back up. Silence.

Annette went to the breaker to check that. I went into the basement (which is only 5 feet high) to manually turn off and on the furnace. Nothing. And, it's December 10th along the Michigan-Indiana border...where they use terms like "lake effect snow" and "wind chills of -10."

So, I went off to my scheduled breakfast meeting with the number of our normal furnace guy and called him on the way. Told me he'd be there in the early afternoon...showed up at 4:30 p.m. After looking at it for about 20 minutes, he came back to tell me that one of the motors was fried and would need to be replaced but that he didn't have one. It was too late in the day to get one and he'd have to check with the one supplier that's open on Saturday's to see if they had it. They did, but obviously the furnace couldn't be fixed until the next day.

With no heat, we quickly called our normal dog kennel, boarded the dog and then my wife went off to a hotel with the boys, while I went to cover a high school basketball game.

The next day we arrived back at the house and waited for the furnace guy. I eventually had to leave to go do some work, but my wife eventually texted me that the guy was there. Then she texted me that the new part wasn't working. Then she finally texted me that the guy had managed to get it working and for only $350 we had heat again.

Not great, again, but we didn't have a pipe burst or anything (it had only gotten down to about 28 that night), the added expense of the hotel wasn't great, but the kids liked it. And, it wasn't like we needed a completely new furnace.

That Sunday, we started getting some of the storm that caused the Metrodome in Minneapolis to collapse. Thankfully, we had heat.

With the snow flying, the boys went out to play all bundled in their snow pants, coats, mittens, etc. After a while, my older son came inside and went back to playing on the computer. A few minutes later, the dog came in. My younger son, however, stayed out.

We would look out now and again to see where he was and mostly he was just walking around with a stick. The last I had looked, he was trying to climb on the closed turtle sandbox.

Then my wife yelled to me, "Can you yell at him?" Why can't you yell at him, I thought, and asked why. "He's laying in the snow."

"Where?," I asked.

And then the tone of her voice changed.

"There! Over there! He's on the ground face down!"

I looked out the window and sure enough there he was in the middle of the yard, looking as though he was making an angel, but on his stomach.

I opened the door and stepped outside. "Hey, get up!" I called.

Nothing.

I took a few steps outside. "Hey, get up!" I tried again.

Nothing.

At that point, I started sprinting through the snow. I got to him and said something again, with the same result. I knelt down, touched him and still no movement. With my heart stopped, I reached around and turned him onto his back. His eyes were closed and there was still no movement.

One side of my brain began chanting "Please God" over and over again, while the other side started to run through emergency CPR steps and whether I should try to transport him inside. I touched his cheek, which didn't help because he was just in the snow. I started to move his scarf to feel for a pulse, and his eyes slowly opened. "I'm tired," was all he said.

I picked him up and raced inside so that my wife and I could examine him. He showed no signs of trauma. His pupils were fine. His pulse was fine. We still don't know what happened. All he'll say is that he was tired and won't answer any other questions. He snuggled with his mother for an hour or so and then was back up and running around. I, however, was shot for the rest of the day and still have trouble sleeping without seeing that moment of turning him over in the snow with his eyes closed. We've had everyone watching him since, but nothing more has come up. We don't know whether he was trying to play a joke that went awry or if he just fell in his bundled up, Randy-from-"A Christmas Story" outfit, couldn't get up and just thought, "Screw it, I'll just lay here until someone comes to get me."
This past Tuesday, with the remnants of the storm still periodically coming through and multiple local counties declaring states of emergency, I went out to start my car. The battery was strong. It sounded like everything was engaging, but it wouldn't start. I let it sit for a little while and it still wouldn't start. I tried to jump it, just to rule that out, and it still wouldn't start. My wife took the kids to school and then I took her to work and came home to call Triple A. When I finally got through to a representative after being on hold for 45 minutes, they told me that my membership had expired. For $125, I could renew the membership and they would go ahead and send over a tow truck. That being the best option, I went ahead with it.

The car got taken to my normal shop, where they looked at and told me that it needed a new fuel pump. They could have it back on the road that afternoon for just $500. With little choice, I told them to go ahead and went over to my office to tell my staff not to be looking for any Christmas presents this year. (Last year, our company didn't provide any funds for a party or anything and, with the other manager in the area paying some ungodly sum in child support each month, I was the one that had gotten everyone a small Starbucks gift card.)

On Wednesday, my wife, who has been having sinus problems since before Thanksgiving that have never cleared up, left work early because she felt like she had a cold. At just before 4 a.m., I was woken up by her, fully dressed, telling me that she was going to take herself to an urgent care because her throat was swelling up. I said ok and started to go back to sleep. Slowly, it dawned on my what she had said. I went downstairs to find her standing in the dining room. "Maybe, I shouldn't drive myself," she said.

I woke the boys up, got them bundled up and off we went to the emergency room. At first they told her that it was just her normal sinus issues, but luckily a nurse had ordered a standard chest x-ray when we first got there assuming that the doctor would want one. As they were about to discharge her, he finally glanced at the x-ray and found out that she has pneumonia.

Yesterday, when her throat still was feeling tight (her uvula was swollen to about 4 times the normal size), she went back to her normal doctor, and they decided that maybe she was having a reaction to an inhaler they had given her the week before.

I then stood in my snowy lawn and tried to make peace with my God. He was non-committal on whether the testing was over or not. My friends at the newspaper have been debating where I am on the rule of three. Obviously, we're past three...but does that mean that this is a second run of three? How do you count some of them? If they're closely related, is that just one or is it two? It seems that I'm either at five and still have one more, I'm at six and should be safe, or, worst case, I'm at seven and really pretty much screwed.

I hate those people.

Since then, I have barricaded the family in the house, refuse to go near the vehicles, won't answer the phone and have everyone encased in bubble-wrap. I'm going to have a merry Christmas, even if it means that we live as hermits for the next week.

With a friend grieving the death of his wife -- she died three weeks ago at 40 from cancer -- it's easy to keep from losing sight of where this all ranks. The thing with my son was scary, but so far he seems fine. And, my wife's pneumonia isn't something to take lightly, but they're treating it and she's been resting ever since. Everything else is just more annoying than anything. Our daycare provider reminded me of that, saying that with her husband having been laid off for something like 2 years, they would have had trouble just getting the furnace fixed and probably would've abandoned the car or left it sitting in the driveway till spring.

However, I just thought that I would share my two weeks of mishaps. If nothing else, for the time being, I'm now really thankful for each day that comes and goes without someone trying to extract large sums of money from me or where everyone's health is at least as good as it was at the start of the day.

Maybe instead of the three ghosts, I just got a different version to help remind me about the spirit of the season and what's really important.

In any case, barring any other set-backs, that's what I'm going with. It at least sounds better than "my luck sucks."