. . .AND THEN A FUNNY THING HAPPENED . . .

I believe there is a force in the universe that does not want this post published. What other explanation could there be for my computer shutting down THREE TIMES IN A ROW after I type one paragraph? Oh yeah, it's a crappy computer. But the fact remains that I started typing this an hour ago and I'M STILL STUCK ON THE FIRST PARAGRAPH!

I started to write this morning about the "force in the universe" but believing it was a bit more benevolent. Bear with me, as some of this will require some time-travelesque back story. Oh, and believers in The Secret . . . try not to piss yourselves with excitement.

It started with a small coincidence. When I was growing up, the house across the street was owned by Mr. D'Ambrosi, a small, fussy, elderly Italian man, and when he passed away the house was bought by the Drake family. They had several kids, all older than me, but I was friendly with their daughter Liz and had a crush on their son Linc (and I deny that it had anything to do with his Camaro with the Rolling Stones sticker on the back window). Many years go by, the Drake family parents have passed away and the Drake kids are scattered, but I visit my father who still lives in the same old house. I wonder what's become of Liz. I look her up on Classmates.com and reconnect. We exchange pictures of the kids, where we've been, what we've done. She sends a picture or two of Linc, he's still hot, my taste in men is validated. That's been a couple of years ago, and since then Liz and I will send the occasional funny internet forwarded joke, nothing too terribly personal, and that's about the extent of it. Fast forward to last week. The old man and I are sitting on the couch in the family room and an old episode of Malcolm in the Middle is on. I'm not paying much attention, but the hubby gets all excited. Seems the episode is about the family traveling in a motorhome to the Burning Man festival in Nevada. I must admit that while I'd heard of Burning Man, it's less than blip on my radar screen. Don't understand why someone would willingly spend a week with 50,000 other sweaty, smelly people camped out in the dry, dusty, Nevada desert in the summer time to watch an arson. Just don't get it. But the hubby is wound up, talking about how much he would like to attend. I see the opportunity for a week of peace without him, tell him to look on the internet when the next one is being held, and put it on the calender.

Now I know you're thinking, geez, Karen, get to the point, this has been a whole lotta wordiness for one little coincidence . . . ok here it is . . . the very next e-mail I receive is from Liz, writing about a guy from high school who had gone to, yes, you guessed it, THE BURNING MAN FESTIVAL, and the e-mail included 30-plus pages of his photos. How weird is that?

OK, now the next coincidence is stranger, and also requires a trip to the past. Bear with me. Hey, as an aside, had you noticed how short the posts have been? Writer's block or something. Appear to be over that now, don't you think?

Rewind to summer 1999. We have a two year old. We have a two year old who is the only grandchild and is spoiled with every toy under the sun. We have a 900 square foot two bedroom home in Tempe. I am pregnant and really beginning to wonder where we will put the new kid. Is the uninsulated garage out of the question? We put our house on the market and begin to look for something bigger. The hubby and I are still friends with the person who introduced us (I will not begin to be angry with him for introducing us for a couple more years), a charming alcoholic we'll call Buddy. As a charming alcoholic, Buddy attracted more than his fair share of soft-hearted attractive women who wanted to "help" him. Buddy had a rocky marriage to the long-suffering Barbara (may still, for all I know), but in the summer of 1999 they were on the outs. Buddy was seeing a nice girl we'll call Jess, and had moved in with her and her mom and siblings. My understanding is that the mom was recently divorced and having a hard time making ends meet, and Buddy was trying to get a mortgage to buy the house from her so she could make a fresh start. My hubby, being fast friends with Buddy, wanted to buy a house in the same cul-de-sac as Buddy's future home, but that didn't work out. Soon after, Buddy announces he cannot secure a mortgage for the Jess' mom's house (as I said, he's an alcoholic, with a spotty work history at best), and the house will be going into foreclosure. We were pre-approved for a mortgage, and without consulting me my spouse makes an offer on the house. I had not even seen the inside of the house at that time. We take possession of the house about a week later. Jess is still in college and we agree to let her leave some of her things in the house. We like her a great deal, she's still seeing Buddy, and the four of us all become good friends. Not too long after, Jess leaves to be closer to her mom, a couple years after that we have a falling out with Buddy, and that's the end of that.

Fast forward eight years. Last month we took apart a bed that our youngest child had in her room because it was way too big for the room and she had no floor space to play. I put the bed in our "junk room" where we pile holiday stuff, and other accumulated crap that has no other place in the house. I don't go in there much, but as I shove the bed in there, I look around at the stuff that still belongs to Jess. I begin to wonder where/how she is. We had a postcard from her from Southeast Asia somewhere, in 2004 or 2005, but it didn't indicate her last name or how to get in touch with her. She had a different last name from her mom, but thinking I might be able to locate her through mom, I googled mom and siblings without much success other than they were in Missouri maybe. I let it go.

Fast forward to this week. I have come to accept that I am a plodder. I will never be the high powered career woman. I like my set tasks, my time to accomplish them. This week at work was hell, for a number of reasons, but I had 38 hours worked by the time I left on Thursday so only had to serve 2 hours of time on Friday. I manage to catch the 11 a.m. showing of the new movie The Brave One (I'll let you know whether I'd recommend it when I decide whether I liked it) and was home folding laundry by 1:30 p.m. So I'm folding laundry, the kids come home from school. My son was practicing his trombone, my daughter was watching me fold laundry, I called my mother and was listening to her describe her recent stint as a substitute teacher. The doorbell rings. There stands . . . . drum roll please . . . Jess. 8 years almost to the day since she'd moved away. I didn't say anything, because I was still on the phone with my mom. I just hugged her and she hugged me back . . . and that in itself was odd, if you know me you know I'm not a hugger, especially not a girl hugger, but it was just natural. She stayed a while, talked, played my son's trombone, laughed. She lives in Ohio, just here visiting. But oh, how strange after eight years of no contact to think of her and have her appear.

So here's to weird coincidences. To thinking of odd things and old friends and having them appear. And now, after 14 reboots (literally) of this old clunky computer, I think I'll publish this post.