Superstition

  

I have really never been a superstitious person. I never threw salt over my shoulder if I spilled it. I always loved having a black cat and never worried about it crossing my path. Ladders only bothered me if I had to climb them. It never occurred to me that there might be some tiny bit of truth in what other people said about the curses of superstition, until now.

 

About a year ago, I was sleeping and I heard a loud noise. It was a cat that decided to try and climb up my dresser mirror. Unfortunately, the mirror was only leaning against the wall and not attached to the dresser. When the cat pushed on the mirror, it fell behind the dresser and broke. I didn’t want to get cut so I just left it there where it fell

.

My female Yorkie became pregnant. We bought her to be a companion for our male and thought it would bring us extra money. When she went into labor, the vet we had at that time wouldn’t let us bring her in right away. He made us wait until she almost died. After a C-section and a dead puppy, I was charged six hundred and ninety dollars for the vet bill. I had to pay it out and got fussed at every time I went in to pay it. The vet charged me one hundred percent interest on my payments as well. I finally paid it off but found out the vet across the river, about forty-five minutes from my home only charged one hundred and fifty for the same surgery and told me to bring in the dog right away if she started labor. The next time I did.

 

That year, we had our boat tied up to a tree in the lake, to make it easy for us to take it out when we wanted to ride in it or go fishing. We had a drought that made the lake level decline and the boat propeller became wedged into the sand. We decided to wait until it rained to work it out of the sand and bring it back to the house via boat ramp. When it did rain, the boat didn’t get loose, in fact, it stayed put and the water rose dramatically in the lake. When I walked down to the lake to see the boat, the bow and the top of the motor were visible but the rest was under water. I had to pay someone eighty dollars to wench that boat out of the water and we thought maybe the battery wasn’t any good because it wouldn’t start. We bought a new battery and found that it was the motor and needed repair after sitting in the salty lake water for months.

 

During the same time period, we took our Harley Davidson to a bike shop to be fixed. The mechanic said he would get right on it. He didn’t touch it for three months.

 

During those three months, the stove caught fire and the thermostat quit working in the oven. I called to find out how much it cost to replace it and it was too much for us at that time, so I just started using the microwave. Meantime, two of the four burners on the stove quit working as well. In the process of having to use the microwave, the breaker for that particular electric circuit started flipping, cutting off the refrigerator, my computer and the air conditioner. We moved the microwave twice to put it on other breakers so we could cook. We finally figured out if we unplugged the hot water heater, we could use the microwave or the coffee maker or the toaster but not any two at the same time.

 

 

Then, the washing machine wouldn’t quit running water on the ‘fill’ mode. I looked for the receipt to take the washer back since it was only ten months old and my husband had burned it with an old cabinet I had put the receipt in. No receipt, no return. . I finally figured out if we used another washing cycle, the water would cut off and the washing machine would agitate

 

All went quite smooth until summer and it got so hot that we had to bring in another air conditioner we had in the storage shed. That unit pulled more electricity than the others and started flipping the breaker again. So, we took extension chords and ran the air conditioners upstairs to other breakers. The house was starting to feel cool until the living room air conditioner lost its compressor.

 

 

I bought a fan. I assembled it myself and it worked for about two weeks and quit. My husband took it back and got another one just like it. We had to assemble this one too and when we took all the pieces out, one of the screws was already stripped and I couldn’t use a screwdriver in it. I couldn’t figure that out since it was still wrapped in plastic when I bought it. We found another screw in our tool shed and used it but periodically as we moved the fan around, the fan base came apart for no apparent reason. Finally my husband just took it apart and propped the fan part on the back of a chair.

 

My husband was sitting in the downstairs bedroom watching television while I was working upstairs on my computer and he noticed every time I turned on my printer, the breaker box would spark. Then, it sparked when the compressor on my air conditioner upstairs came on. We called an electrician and he tried to separate the wires that controlled the hot water heater and the air conditioner. I paid him for his work and discovered that same day that the sound quit on my computer. That meant I couldn’t play my CDs or listen to sound on videos or music through the computer.

 

That same week, three female cats had litters of four kittens each. One litter I found in our motor home and the cat had become feral and I couldn’t catch her or gather the kittens up without being scratched and bitten. Another litter was found in our shed where we had removed the big air conditioner and they were getting sucked dry from fleas. I bought flea bombs but found out they didn’t work but about three days. The third litter was found in the house under the bed. Now, I had twelve small kittens to add to the nine adult cats we already were feeding. My cat food cost and the litter cost ran way up within the next five weeks.

 

At the same time, my Yorkshire terrier had three puppies. We were excited, thinking that we could make some extra money and fix the electrical problems. It didn’t happen. We sold one and the others we still have. Everyone that called from an ad I put in the local paper wanted a Yorkie that was registered and we couldn’t register them because we didn’t have papers on the father. Also, everyone that called wanted a tiny dog, not over four pounds. It just so happened that one Yorkie was a freak and weighed too much for the local dog consumers. My workload really increased in the house with all these animals.

 

 

Meanwhile, the bike shop never started working on the Harley. We picked up the bike and brought it to Dallas where there was a big Harley repair shop whose owners told us that they would start working on it in a week. We were grateful that they took the bike in the spring so we could ride it soon.

 

We thought it would be a good idea to neuter the male cats. We took one in and when we got him back, he was in La-La land. I mean, he never recovered; he didn’t do anything but eat, sleep, pee and defecate. He didn’t hunt, play or want attention like the other cats. We figured he was recuperating, so we brought in another cat to be neutered. When we went in that afternoon to pick him up, I waited and waited until the doctor came out of the room and said, "He didn’t make it."

 

I said, "What?"

 

He said, "He had a cardiac arrest during surgery and just didn’t make it. It happens sometimes. That is the risk you take in surgery."

 

I couldn’t believe it. My cat? Well, I didn’t have that cat very long and it was my female’s offspring who slept on my husband’s side of the bed and it was really his cat. But- if I had had that cat for years and it had been my only cat, I would have been traumatized. I was wary about taking any more cats to that vet.

 

Meanwhile, the washing machine went on the ‘blink’ again. The spin cycle just quit altogether. While I was trying to figure out how to do the laundry without a spin cycle, my husband was moving food from the refrigerator to the microwave and a spot in the kitchen floor fell in. Instead of telling me about the hole, he just put a box of bottled tea on top of the hole and left it. When I found the hole, I put an old cabinet door in its place and it is still there with a throw rug hiding it.

Then, the shower head quit shooting out water properly, the toilet seat broke, the kitchen faucet broke, the boat motor wouldn't start, and many other little things that become aggravating in the long run-extension cords getting hot, can't find things we need to fix all this stuff....

 

Then, I started having problems with the cell phones. I never before cut out on the other side but now, when I tried to talk to someone, anyone, my phone would cut out on their line and then started cutting out on mine. I would just hear bits and pieces of the conversation and the same for the one I talked to. It became quite annoying so I called the network and they did a lot of testing on the lines and said it was my phones. They upgraded my phones and it still does the same thing. I can’t get out of my network contract for another year or I have to pay one hundred and seventy-five dollars.

 

After four months, I called to find out about the Harley, and the bike shop told me to pick it up and bring it back in a year when they weren’t so busy. I could have screamed but my husband said not to make them angry because all the bikers in all the bike shops were like a big family and they would spread the word that I was hard to work with and not fix his motorcycle. It was now about one and a half years since I bought the bike and we never have ridden on it. Now, we have to replace the floor in our trailer, get a tire because that one went flat, and replace trailer lights before we can pick up the bike and move it to another shop.

 

The electrician told me today that it will take approximately four hundred dollars to fix the problems in our house.

 

We still have a hole in the kitchen floor and the washing machine still doesn’t spin water out of it.

Although I have given away many kittens, we still have five feral cats we can’t catch and the animal control officer wants forty dollars a cat to pick them up. We still have four females and two males that need to be neutered. We have five dogs and our female is pregnant again.

 

Another female cat has a kitten somewhere behind my dresser with the broken mirror. How long is the curse on a broken mirror? Seven years?

Reviews

[sk8tagirl95]

I LOVED IT :)

[Albert Freeman]

Talk about extremely bad luck. If this wasn't true, I'd say it would make for a interesting story in a movie or so. Amazing how things can happen that can change your entire view on things.

[Jacqueline]

I've officially died and was resurrected after reading this story! ;) Holy s**t, if this is true then you should be in the Guinness Book of Records or something because the chain of events that happened after the broken mirror (by black cat no less!) is amazing! After reading one paragraph, I was almost afraid to go on to the next calamity, but the story sucked me in!