“Dammit Jasmine! What is that smell?!” my sister yelled from across the house.
“F#ck! The cookies are burning!” I had leapt into action and ran toward the kitchen when the pungent smell really hit me. I managed to turn the oven off as I simultaneously opened its door to a wall of billowing smoke.
“Oh God why?! I can’t do anything right! Maybe I should just give up.”
“Yeah, maybe you should just jump into a ditch,” my sister said jokingly.
“You’re not helping.”
It’s been a month since I left school and my new boyfriend behind, and I wanted to make everything perfect for when I came to visit him for his birthday. I spent the day looking for the perfect present and creating the perfect card only to realize that Murphy’s Law was only in full effect.
I just couldn’t catch a break. I messed up a few times with the handmade card and when it was finally finished my sister told me that it was a stupid idea. I tried editing, printing out, and framing a picture I took while away on vacation only to have it take a few hours longer than I thought it would have. I walked around the mall and the electronic stores all day with my whining sister only to apprehend that I couldn’t pick a present out for someone if my life depended on it, and which in the end, led to the flaming cookies.
“Don’t give your boyfriend those f#cked up cookies. The poor guy’s going to choke on them,” my sister yelled with a mocking snicker.
“F#ck! I’ll buy some then.”
I went to the mall right before it closed and ran into an off brand cookie place where the locals buy their tasty treats and ordered a freshly baked assortment of fluffy cookies.
There. Now all I have to do is get these lame gifts to him tomorrow and hope he doesn’t want to break up with me.
I drove three hours south to the county of San Bernardino to get to where my boyfriend was staying for the summer, and about two and a half hours into my traffic congested ride, my car started to shake uncontrollably.
“God dammit, why can’t anything go my way?!”
But when I pulled up into a parking space in front of the house I forgot about the two day span of terrible troubles. I saw my boyfriend walk out of the door and when he smiled and greeted me with a kiss all of my balled up frustration melted away.
I spent the rest of the weekend hanging out with some of my friends from college and my wonderful boyfriend. It was a few days of pleasant bliss and a break from all that was falling apart with my life back at home.
It eventually came to a sudden halt when it was time for me to leave though. I kissed him goodbye and spent the next two hours crying on the road for no reason. I was going to see him again in less than a week to watch the final installment of Harry Potter with him and some of our friends, but for some reason something else got a hold of me.
Then all of a sudden I heard a loud bang. I quickly pulled over to the far right shoulder of a nearly vacant long stretch of highway thirty miles away from my destination in the middle of nowhere. I took a quick walk around my car and noticed that my tire had completely blown out damaging the side panel of my door and leaving me momentarily stranded under the wrath of the hot sun.
After calling AAA for assistance with changing my spare, I sat with my feet dangling out of the front passenger seat. I knew that if I wasn’t driving unusually slowly from my random breakdown and that if I hadn’t have acted quickly and already had both hands on the steering wheel, that I could have easily spun out of control and possibly have died. I thought about life and all that has led up till now while I waited for help in the gradually setting sun.
I’m glad that this didn’t happen on the trip we planned to Oregon.
To read the journey from the beginning click here.
Jazzed About Stuff 