The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away

As some of you know, I've had a string of terrible, horrible, no good very bad days this summer. Divorce does not exactly elevate the psyche. Somehow, bad follows bad, with worse not far behind. At the end of a week, it'll seem like we've clearly reached the apex, the zenith, the acme of badness. Then something else goes wrong.

These stories will mostly be funny some day. Some of them were even funny the next day. Or when I told them to some of you. :-) Not so much funny ha-ha to live through, though.

So Annie and Jonathan took a train to Ann Arbor this week. They met their dad and spent the weekend visiting with Grapes. Had a Grape family reunion, in fact. First one without me. Not that I was feeling sorry for myself. No, no.

Actually, I enjoyed the peace and quiet. It was quiet. And peaceful. Until my phone made that noise it makes when one of my children is texting me. It was Jonathan. "Apparently Annie left her laptop on the train." Oh my, said I.

I received no further news for hours. Being a trained glass half-full girl, I assumed that it must have turned up. Ha. Annie was simply avoiding telling me, as she was busy berating herself and was afraid I'd do it, too. No mom berating occurred, as she was clearly covering that base all by herself. Poor kid.

Many calls were made to Amtrak. No luck.

Carl dropped the kids off Sunday afternoon. Jon came running in, needing to use the facilities. Apparently his laptop was necessary equipment for this event. Why, I don't know. Why is a cell phone needed in the bathroom, such that it can (and will) fall in the toilet, as has happened at least twice in our family?

Anywho, J was grabbing and pulling and fumbling with his laptop when SMASH, down it crashed onto the ceramic tile floor. Oh my, said I. The screen was oh so nicely cracked, both horizontally and vertically.

Two laptops in one weekend? Really? Isn't that a bit over the top, even for this summer and my family? Apparently not. Apparently I underestimated our capacity for wretched events. OK. We're all full up now. Stop it. God. Karma. Fate. Bad luck. Just stop it. Now.

OK. here's the good news: we did NOT experience Hurricane Irene. My basement was dry all weekend, thank you very much. And for the pollyanna glass half-full record, Jon's hard drive, which seemed glitchy after the fall, seems fine now. The screen hasn't fallen apart yet, nor have the colors bled out or done whatever colors do when they leave a computer screen, never to work again.

And here's the even better news. Someone found Annie's laptop. And did not steal it. And Amtrak has it. And is sending it to Ann Arbor so that Annie can drive to Michigan and pick it up tomorrow. And I don't have to buy a new Mac Powerbook or whatever flavor machine she currently drives.

So the Lord giventh and the Lord taketh away. But Amtrak rocks. 
:-)