The Money Pit

Everybody has a little bad luck from time to time.  I've always believed that the purpose of bad luck was to help you appreciate good luck when you have it.
I'm beginning to think that maybe the good luck is just a ploy to trick you into believing that all you have to do is just hang in there a little longer, and things will get better...After I met Ray, saw his house, got up enough courage to go inside, made a path through the middle so we could walk, plowed down the weeds, hired some guys to pull down the crumbling shingles, hauled away the collapsed porch and deck, replaced the windows, painted the entire inside, remodeled the master bathroom, finished the basement, re-sided the house, and landscaped the front lawn, I was still pretty optimistic.
After the pipe to the hose bib burst and flooded the downstairs living room, the tree man cut down the irreplaceable second story balcony for no apparent reason, the garbage disposal broke and the pipes under the kitchen sink rusted out and flooded the laundry room, I started getting a little concerned.
When we discovered that the house had an architectural flaw that made our brand new, custom made bow window impossible to install without major modifications, and we realized half way through that turning the attic into a walk in closet was a nightmare, I started to worry.  A lot. 
When I tried to peel off the wallpaper in the master bathroom so I could re-paper it, and the walls began to crumble, we brought home the wrong fixtures four times, the township refused to give us a permit to replace the front porch that we had just torn down, and the basement started to leak after we finished it, I realized that worrying was not the answer.  I considered drinking.
Then ... when the master bathroom recently started leaking into the kitchen below, the central air conditioner died, the guest bathroom began to leak into the living room, the dishwasher needed repairs, my nursing license expired, the hot water heater rusted and needed to be replaced, the roof sprung a leak ruining the new paint in the master bedroom, and the refrigerator/freezer motor burnt out and all the food inside spoiled, allowing the smell of spoiled fish and fowl to permeate the entire house... I was getting darn close to ... panic.
But now ... my computer ... the one that has safely housed the unpublished manuscript that I have been writing for the PAST FIVE YEARS has crashed.  Self-destructed.
Most people would be numb by now.  But my pain ... has no relief.  I never did get around to copying my manuscript onto a floppy disk or CD, even though I had promised myself that I would do just that a thousand times.Glancing over at MY blank computer screen, I am ... consoled by the fact that RAY'S computer is working just fine.  He still has all the scores from his skillions of FreeCell Games safely stored in his hard drive.  All the jokes from his Internet buddies are still intact, easily accessible and ready to be enjoyed again and again.So as I sit here, grieving over all my lost files, breathing through my mouth so as not to assault my nostrils with the painfully slow fading scent of fish and fowl from the basement, mumbling to myself trying to remember how I started that first sentence of my manuscript back in 1999, I hear raindrops starting to fall on the roof.  The ones that will be leaking into the bedroom and the basement in just a few more minutes.  Not to be confused with the bathroom leaks in the kitchen and the living room, of course.  But ... at least I now have air conditioning.

And I realize ... no one would even notice the smell if I killed Ray...