When it Rains, It Pours

Penn and I are having one of those weeks during which everything breaks all at once. Surely this happens to everyone, right? One minute everything is functioning just fine, then all of a sudden half of the things in the house break almost simultaneously. And generally this happens when you are already low on money to begin with, although luckily for us that wasn't the case this time around. Still, it's so obnoxious.
It all started with my Blackberry. The tracker ball wasn't working very well--I could no longer scroll to the right, which pretty much makes the phone useless for anything other than making and receiving phone calls, and if that's the case why have a Blackberry?--so I tried to clean it with alcohol wipes and that worked for about a day. Then I decided to be hardcore and take the tracker ball apart to clean it more thoroughly. It should have worked. Every YouTube video I found with the instruction process promised it would be easy. Well, "easy" doesn't apply to me, I guess, because I accidentally bent a metal fitting out of place and couldn't get the darn thing to clip back together, so now my phone has no roller ball. I ordered a new part off of the internet and I thought it would get here today (the phone has been broken since Tuesday) but it turns out that the website automatically paired an old billing address with my current debit card number, which means my purchase got denied. I was expecting the part today, but now with the website debacle it probably won't be here until Monday or Tuesday. So, uh, don't text me. It's useless until then.
THEN, the same night my phone broke, Penn was helping me attempt to clean my filthy, filthy laptop keyboard. This is going to gross out the non-pet people among you, but it was so full of cat hair that some of the keys weren't striking properly anymore. I KNOW. GROSS. Even I thought it was disgusting. Anyway, long story short, in the process of removing the keyboard Penn accidentally removed a piece that shouldn't have been removed, and of course it wasn't as easy as just sliding it back into place. Oh, nooooo, heaven forbid anything with technology be simple. He apologized profusely for breaking the computer when he was just trying to help and I accepted the apology and all was well and he was going to take my computer to the repair store the next day.
And then he went to the computer repair store yesterday on what was supposed to be his work-at-home day. Note that I said "What was supposed to be" rather than "was." See, he tried to log onto his work network from the work laptop and the darn thing wouldn't connect. So instead of having a work-at-home day his plan was to just call into work for an 11 AM meeting but otherwise take a day of leave. It sucks that he had to take leave time, but he can make it up with overtime and get those hours back. Anyway, remember that 11 AM phone meeting I mentioned? Yeah. He was going to drive to the computer repair shop at 10:00, ask someone to look at the computer, and hopefully get home in time for his meeting. Well, that didn't happen, either. Instead, he waited in line for forty minutes, never got to talk to anyone, got frustrated, got in the truck to rush home to his meeting, and then less than a block from our house got into a freakin' CAR WRECK when he ran into a car making a left turn across three lanes of traffic. The truck was all messed up. The bumper was pretty much broken off entirely, the hood was crunched just enough so that it wouldn't open, and one of the headlights was shattered.
Seriously, the whole thing was just unbelievable. I couldn't believe how one thing after another after another kept breaking. By the time Penn called me to say, "I was in an accident," all I could do was laugh. Well, okay, I didn't laugh until I found out that he was okay. Then all I could do was laugh, because it was just so absurd.

Fortunately, things ended up improving yesterday. First, the insurance companies decided that the other driver was 100% at fault in the accident which means our truck is getting repaired for free. I was worried about how we were going to get around for the next week or so since we only have the one vehicle to share (we can get 90% of where we need to go on the bus or subway, but for some of my tutoring jobs and my baby-sitting job public transportation isn't an option). We were also stressing because we're supposed to help a friend move this weekend and we would have felt awful having to call her to say, "Surprise! You get to rent a U-Haul after all!" Luckily, we get a free rental car while ours is being repaired and they were even able to give us a GIGANTIC truck, which means we can help with the move this weekend after all. Seriously, the truck is huge. It's a four-door thing that is practically twice the size of Penn's current truck. It's definitely not meant for driving around the city, so that will be an adventure. Still, we have a truck. Plans aren't ruined.
Also, after we finally got the car stuff sorted out Penn took my laptop to be repaired, and although I can't have it back until next week it is going to get fixed, so I'm happy. I'm also happy that I had the foresight to add all of my dissertation files to a dropbox account so I can work on Penn's computer until mine is back from the shop.

So, yeah. This has been one of those weeks that makes me wished I lived off the grid on a tiny farm somewhere where trucks and computers and phones don't matter and I'm not handicapped by the loss of them. But it's all going to be okay.