Mrs. Murphy's Law

This one, I learned from my Mom...

Murphy's Law is... if something can go wrong, it will go wrong.
Mrs. Murphy's Law is the addendum that says it will go wrong when Mr. Murphy is away on a business trip.

Welcome to my life.

I guess what happened to me would be better described as Mrs. Wang's Law (or, Wang TaiTai's Law to be linguistically accurate) since I live in China.

I guess it's better to end a day badly than to start it badly since you can just go to bed after the incident and start fresh the next day, rather than have the bad incident start you off on a dreadful tailspin for the rest of your day. --- That's me looking on the bright side of things.

So, it was just after 8:00. Tom is away, I was tired, so I thought I'd check my email, check on the children and go to bed for as good of a full night sleep a nursing mom can expect. I turned out the lights, checked that the doors were locked and went upstairs. I went into my room and attempted to switch on the light but first switched off the light switch that doesn't turn on or off anything in the room, so then I switched the two switches at the same time and BOOM! CLINK! CRASH! A light bulb burned out and exploded into the air... all over my bed. This happens regularly here because of the bad wiring, so I was cursing this place. It feels like everything is made badly and doesn't work quite right. Even the kids know it. When something goes wrong, they say, "well, that's because it was made in China!"

After a few choice, yet muted, words (I didn't want to make matters worse by waking the children) I turned on the hall light to survey the damage... I mean, I tried to turn on the hall light but the fuse had blown, too, so after more choice words, I headed downstairs and out to the garage to flip the switch.

As you saw from my previous post, we'd had a sand storm today so everything is even more dirty than normal and I'd already taken a shower, so more choice words as I headed outside to climb on the filthy bins in our garage to reach the fuse box. I steadied myself on the folded baby carriage and bins, hoisted myself up, and, while precariously balanced, knocked over 2 bins and a folded case of drill bits and other shiny silver tool type things (whatever) that crashed and scattered all over the driveway and into the bushes. Finally, after scratching and bruising myself, I reached the nearly-out-of-reach switch and flipped it. As I climbed down from my perch, I saw one of our friendly neighborhood uniformed guards walking my way, staring. I smiled, contemplated asking him "ni keyi bang wo ma" (can you help me) decided against it, uttered a "ni hao" and continued with my mission.

Then I spent the next 10 minutes gathering small, shiny, bits and bobs. I picked up the Halloween decorations and novelties that had scattered and put them back in the bin and piled the bins back up, a bit more neatly. I vacuumed up the bed and floor and now I'll go take a shower.

I'm keeping it in perspective. My loved ones and I are all safe and have a comfortable house to live in, while thousands are suffering right now in this country. Tom says thousands are living in the streets of Chengdu because they are afraid to go into the buildings. He will sleep with his flashlight and boots by his bed and pray for safety.

It is now 9:25. Good night.