Randomness OR Randomivity OR Stuff I Just Thought I Had to Talk About

Just waiting on my editor/proofreader to send me back Bubba and the Missing Woman.  I have to be patient because she's such a nice person and she has a family and she does such a good job for me.  But she emailed me and said she was having a hard time editing the manuscript because she was eager to find out what happened to Willodean.  I can understand.  I get lots of email about that very same subject matter.  Also get emailed about when, when, when is Bubba 3 coming out on Kindle/Nook/ereader of your choice?

I would put a specific date on it, but I don't want to do it because there's always the chance it might be late.  Not because of the editor/proofreader, of course.  (Her name is Mary and SHE'S GREAT!  She's uber nice and she catches 99% of everything.  She even checks for consistency, because well, with everything going on in Bubba, it's hard to remember who had cornflower blue eyes and who had peacock blue eyes.  Seriously, Mary caught that and she's right.  So not the same color.)  (I also have other readers doing their thing to make sure I didn't step on my metaphorical weewee but I won't mention names.)  But it comes down to my favorite saying of all time:

Stuff happens.

Except I don't usually say, stuff.  I say something else with four letters and usually in a sarcastic manner, because you know, stuff happens.  It happens all the time.  I'm standing there, minding my own business and a meteor drops on my head.  (In reality this would be a positive thing because those guys on Meteorite Men say one falling on an actual person would be like, an expensive thing.  Of course, it wouldn't be good for me since the meteor landing on my person would likely hurt me or even worse, kill me.  And hey, I'm mentally picturing the best gravestone saying, ever.  But my family would be set.  "Yeah, Mom died, but we got a million bucks for the meteor that hit her, so it's all gravy.")  So there ya go, stuff happened.

I should knock on wood because I don't want stuff to happen.  I want Mary to finish.  I want to make my corrections.  I want to look at the finished product and be all silly and happy and weird because I'm finally FINISHED with Bubba 3!  Then I want to put it on Amazon, Smashwords, and BN and run outside and yell something completely bizarre so that my neighbors will be absolutely certain I am, in fact, insane!  (Things I might yell: "Yellow monkeys are taking over the White House!  Should we save Obama or let him eat bananas?!" or "I have become frantically spastic with my need for a hot fudge sundae!" or possibly "Who wants to go skinny-dipping in the Potomac with the Speaker of the House?"  (Well, I had to ping both Democrats and Republicans, in all fairness.)

Wait.  I lost my train of thought.

Stuck on gravestone epitaphs

Oh, yes.  Stuff happens.  When I lived in El Paso one of my Hispanic friends said that in Spanglish they say, "Kaka pasa."  I like that, too.  Kaka does pasa.  A lot.

Anyone have a headache?

And today I have an excellent illustration of that concept.  I have undeniable proof that stuff happens.  All the time.  To me.  Dammit.

Here's the photo.  This is an actual photo that I took with my Droid in my kitchen:

Does anyone need a hint as to what this is?  It's something sitting inside a microwave oven.  Specifically, my microwave oven.  Okay, the hell with it.  It's a container of Chinese food sitting inside my microwave oven.  AND it's been somewhat charred.

How did this happen, you ask?  Shit happened.  Excuse me, stuff happened.

Oh, the hell with it again.  It's HIM's fault.  Yesterday I saw HIM put a cup of coffee inside the very same microwave oven with a metal spoon still in the cup.  I naturally protested.  "The product guidelines do not recommend the insertion of metallic objects into the oven area for safety reasons," I said.  (Not really, but I'm pretty sure I thought it.)

HIM said, "It's okay.  I do it at work all the time."  (Well, sure HIM does.  It's their microwave.  Not ours.  If their shit blows up and starts a fire then well, it's just an office casualty, right?)

I said, "Well, okay, but I thought metal and microwaves don't go together."

So HIM microwaved his coffee to volcanic intensity and the spoon did not spark or blow up.

Fast forward to today.  I took the container of Chinese food out of the refrigerator and thought, Well, HIM did it with the spoon.  No problem.

Problem.  Big BLEEPING PROBLEM!

Well, more than one problem.  The first problem was that I walked away after pushing the button on the microwave for sixty seconds while I was speaking to my sister on the phone.

The second problem was the picture above.

Apparently a spoon in a cup of coffee is not the same as a Chinese food container with metal handles.  I'm told that the paper was ignited by the metal handles.

You see.  Stuff happened.

On the brighter side, the fire seemed to have put itself out.  Or maybe it was the Chinese food inside the container that put it out.  And the microwave wasn't even scorched.

On the bad side, I had to throw away the Chinese food because it didn't look appetizing with ashes all over it.

I should have knocked on some wood.