Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse...

I've been having a rough go of it lately. It seems like every time I turn around, I get another piece of bad news or something else negative (or costly) unexpectedly happens. I'm trying not get all down and "poor, poor pitiful me" about it. It is what it is. And, truthfully, some of it shouldn't have been all that unexpected--if only I had given it a proper place on my radar and not learned to tune out its annoying, constant blip. Just about every day for the past few weeks, I've woken up and told myself, "Hey, at least there's nothing else in my life that can possibly go wrong!" but then--just like that--something else happens. Today, for instance, I couldn't find my keys. And I couldn't go to work because I couldn't find my car keys. Anywhere. In fact, the last time I can remember seeing them was at the Tampa International Airport, coming out of the security area. And I remember thinking, "Oh, I better put those some place safer so I don't lose them!" (up until that point, they had been in the pocket of the hoody I was carrying with me in case it got too cold on the airplane). Unless they mysteriously turn up, we'll either be forced to share one set of car keys (which gets complicated), or pay around $200 to get a new set of keys (I only know the cost because I've lost a set of keys for this car before). [Update: apparently I can pick up a new transponder key and keyless entry remote on e-bay for around $40, inclusive of shipping. Then it's just a question of how much the dealer will charge me to program them for my car. Still, it's not like going to the hardware store and having a new house key cut for a couple of bucks.]

I'm actually at the point where it's starting to get funny. For real. If anything else goes wrong, I'll probably just starting laughing. That's where I'm at. Truth be told, I've been lucky that the things that have gone wrong have all been fixable things that have just come at an enormous expense to us, and have not been at all health related. So, at least we have our health.

If life truly is a journey, I feel like I had climbed halfway up the mountain and then tripped and fell about two thirds of the way back down. Not only do I need to wait for all the wounds to heal, but then I need to get back up and cover all that distance again. It kind of sucks, but like I said before, it is what it is. As Maya Angelou so eloquently put it, "When you know better, do better." Now it's time to do better. It's hard, though, because at this particular moment in time, I feel like I have nothing to look forward to. It seems like it's going to take a lot of hard work to get back on track. I'm sure that once stuff stops going wrong, and I have a couple weeks of sanity, it won't seem so bad after all. But for right now, I just don't know. It's hard to get a clear perspective while I'm still in the thick of it. But speaking of Journey, I'm going to listen to Don't Stop Believin' now. Maybe it'll make me feel better.