Murphy's Law

- Charles R. Swindoll

Hello my dear friends, I hope this new week is treating you good.

Do you know what Murphy's Law is?

I do and I know it rather well because sometimes it seems like Murphy is alive, living in my house and sticking his law in my face every chance he gets.

Case in point this weekend.  Those of you that follow my blog know how much I've been looking forward to this weekend.  It was the weekend when I was supposed to transplant all my seedlings into the garden as well and prepare numerous containers for the seedlings on my deck.  Planting the seedlings into the garden beds is not that difficult, although some extra weeding and mulching can be a tad time consuming, but preparing numerous big containers with soil for the deck is a lot of hard work and requires one to be in some sort of good working shape.

Come Saturday morning, I had my tea and I was all ready to go.  Our friend just delivered over a yard of soil to our backyard and it was all waiting for me to grab the shovel and get to work.  Friday night was bitter cold with a risk of frost so I covered all my newly emerging potatoes with some blankets to prevent possible damage.  I was just picking up one of the blankets off of the potatoes when I felt an electricity go through my back and all of a sudden I could hardly stand up.  "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Oh, yes Murphy... I remember, go back to sleep now.

Somehow I got my back to relax a little and worked hard all Saturday.  I was a little sore but surprisingly, it was not that bad.  I promised myself to get some nice rest in the evening and get some extra sleep at night which I did.

On Sunday my back felt a lot better.  I made it, or so I thought.  I was more than excited to get back into the yard and continue my work.  That's when I started feeling tummy cramps. Interestingly enough, Angelina was out of school on Friday with a tummy ache and now it looked like this could have been a stomach virus of sorts.  Once again I told myself to look beyond it and got to work as if nothing was wrong.  It was not as easy as it was on Saturday though.  Sore back I can handle but stomach ache has its ways of bringing me down.  I had to take frequent breaks.

Thanks to my inborn stubbornness I got everything done that I set out to do this weekend.  Or rather, almost everything.  I'm sure I could have done more if I felt better but I'm not complaining.  As to Murphy though, all I can do is shake my head.

I don't even remember the last time I had a stomach ache, and the last time I had a similar back spasm was back in 2007.  Why in the world would this happen to me on one of the most important weekends in the season, and two different things on two separate days to boot?  It's not like I believe in Murphy's Law and consciously worry about it happening.  I don't even think about it until it strikes, but when it does it's seriously annoying.

I looked up Murphy's Law on the internet today and found several different versions of it.  Here they are for your entertainment.  I know I had a chuckle when I read some of them.

• If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong
• If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then
• If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, which you are unprepared for, will promptly develop
• If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something
• Nature always sides with the hidden flaw
• Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first

And last but not least my favourite one for it has happened to me so many times in one way or another:

• When there is a very long road upon which there is a one-way bridge placed at random, and there are only two cars on that road, it follows that: (1) the two cars are going in opposite directions and (2) they will always meet at the bridge

No kidding.  Whenever there is a blockage on the road allowing for only one car to pass and I see another car coming from the opposite direction, no matter how much I try to adjust my speed to ensure a smooth passage, the other car will arrive at the blockage at the same time as me.  This particularly loves to happen when there is a bicyclist that needs to be passed.  Seriously, I'm not making this up.

So there you have it, here is my rant for this lovely Monday afternoon.  I'm feeling better today by the way, not 100% yet but the worse has passed.  Of course, it's not weekend anymore and Murphy is back asleep.

Namaste