I’ve always heard that bad things come in threes, which is terrifying really, if you are on bad thing number two. I was watching a Youtube on the 2011 Japan Tsunami disaster and it was a three-fer: First the earthquake, then the tsunami, then throw in a nuclear disaster. One. Two. Three. Punch.

I started with a nagging cold this week. Sore throat, sniffles. By Wednesday the cough keeps me up all night and just for giggles when I wake in the morning I take a COVID test, which absolutely should be negative because I just had it in late December. Two seconds after dropping the liquid onto the test it’s already glowing pink for absolutely positive, and this is where I have a little discussion with the man above.

Really?

Really, God?

On top of my stomach you are going to let this happen?

They say that if you want to make God laugh you tell him your plans, and I think about that as I process the double pink lines. But I was supposed to film a YouTube at the Yacht Club this weekend, I argue with God. I have PLANS! I whine, and throw a little whoa-is-me-pity-party. On top of my stomach, and not being able to eat, you are going to make me even sicker? Thanks a million. This is great.

I spend the day sick on the couch reading a book by author Suleika Jaouad called Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted. She was a normal young lady that had an itch that wouldn’t go away, and it turned out it was Leukemia. She goes through so much to get cured and is a huge inspiration to me as her words wash over me like sun rays finally peaking out of the clouds on a rainy day. Time lapses without notice as each page turns. My cat stretches, yawns, and rolls over, startling me out of the world of another place that this book has taken me to. Curious about how she is doing now, I look her up on google and it tells me her Leukemia returned and she is fighting it all over gain.

Really, God?

The Japan YouTube lingers in my mind and I think about how they lost everything, their jobs, homes, and even sometimes their lives or worse: The lives of their children. Maybe rain just falls out of the sky onto everyone and it all depends on where you are standing as to how much of it you get.

Sometimes you get Tsunami level rain.

It’s set to rain this weekend, the first rain in awhile here. Rain, when it comes and where it falls, is so random, and I don’t like that the odds of trouble seem to follow the same pattern. I prefer sunny days. Days when I am healthy, days when I get to go hiking with my son, or play with my cat on the floor, or visit my daughter.

I don’t want to divide my days or my life into rainy/sunny, good/bad, sick/healthy, poor/not poor. I want to live my life just as it is; a glorious dumpster fire. And maybe that’s the point of this whole thing, anyways.

My son says bad thing #2 is because God is forcing me to rest, since I am too stubborn to do so on my own. He’s right. Still, I wished he used a better method, like maybe a trip to Bora-Bora, instead of a virus. But knowing me, I’d vlog the whole Bora-Bora thing for YouTube and not rest at all.

Maybe God does know better than me. Really.

Amy Tangerine

(But I will take a hall pass on bad thing #3, Lord. Just in case you were wondering.)

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