Beware the "Curse of Palm Desert"!

That is right- "The Curse of Palm Desert". I seem to have this curse attack me each and every year for the last 5 years, and this year was no exception.

My parents (and any siblings still living at home) travel to Palm desert every year at this time to stay for a week or 2. My dad has Business seminars to attend and they make a vacation of it and usually stay a bit longer. I have never been, but I get a "special" treat anyway.

I am not usually a person that has "issues". Yeah, I have my own set of problems like anyone, but for this 2 week time period every year, some disaster strikes me in one way or another.

The first 2 years my family went to Palm Desert, I got a infection, was stuck in bed at home for a few days on antibiotics. This only happened once a year, and each year was during the week they were gone. I thought that it was kinda funny, and joked that maybe I am cursed when they go away.

Skip ahead to one year later. A few days after they left town, I was having dinner with my Boyfriend and I started to feel funny in my chest. It became a sharp, crushing pain. After laying awake all night in pain, (thinking that I was maybe having a heart attack since it runs in the family) I felt all fine, and went about my life. Later I was to have a full check up (EKG included) and nothing bad happened, but it still scared the bee-geezus out of John, and when he filled in my mom on what happened, I was nearly in big trouble with her for not going to ER when I was in Pain. Once again, we laughed about the Palm desert thing, and wrote it off.

Skip ahead another year. I had lived in a large walk-in part of my parents attic for awhile a few year before, and they wanted it cleaned out of all the other stuff that I had left in there. So one hot afternoon, I was up there cleaning it (a few days after they left for Palm Desert). Since it was so hot- and I was alone in the house- I took off my shirt and was in my jeans and kinda skimpy undershirt (and I am not skinny, so it was not super attractive) but I didn't think of it since I was alone and inside. Well I went down to the kitchen to get some water to drink, and somehow the attic door locked itself from the inside (it does that sometimes- I am not sure why) and we don't have a key that works. So I walk out to the garage to get a chisel and hammer to take the door off it's hinges so I can get back in and finish up in there. I go to get back in the house, and I discover that the door from the garage back into to the HOUSE is locked. My keys, shoes, and shirt are all inside. That door is NEVER locked, but they locked it before the left, and it is one of those doors that you can open from the inside even if it is locked. after all- all i was getting was a few feet from the door and didn't think that it would lock behind me.

As fate would have it, I had my cell phone in my pocket, but the ordeal was not over. They had just changed the locks on the house the day before they left town, and so NO ONE had a spare key (I was the only one). So I then decide to check and see if any of the doors or windows were unlocked that I could crawl thru. I walk outside to the side yard where the dog lives, and I look over the railing, and see water gushing out of a retaining wall that runs under the driveway. I then get confused and call my dad. Turns out that the water main to the house had broken, I was going to have to be talked thru how to turn the main off at the street. So here I am, barefoot, sweating, in a ugly and revealing undershirt, bending over at the curb outside as traffic goes by, trying to turn off the water main. After I fix it, I am still faced with the "how do i get back inside where my shoes, keys and purse are?" (and since I drove to my parents house, I cannot get my car, because it is locked and ALL my keys were in the house). and to top it off- the attic was still locked upstairs as well.

Well I remembered there was ONE open door in the house- my parents balcony door was open to keep the house fresh. The Balcony door that is 3 stories up the side of the house. I had to drag a HUGE heavy latter to the exact opposite side of the house, and set up the ladder, and climb all the way up and crawl over the side of the somewhat shaky railing (barefoot) and get in the house. By that time, John had made it over and he was able to take the attic door off it's hinges and get my stuff out of the attic.

Since the water was still off- I had to melt all the ice in the house and use up the Reverse osmosis water just to be able to water all the pets. Once again- we laughed about the Palm desert thing. (it was less funny this time)

Now move onto this year- My parents were supposed to leave for Palm Desert on Saturday- but postponed it for 2 days (they leave tomorrow).

Well- yesterday was proof that I am not nuts about this Palm desert thing.

I was at In-&-Out for lunch yesterday. I stood up to get some napkins and ketchup- and there was water on the floor unannounced to me under our table. As I took a step forward, my back leg slid out from under me and went backwards. My left leg collapsed and my knee down to my ankle and toes made full contact with the floor (getting cut up on the grout and concrete tiles). In that position, i was doing a half split with my back leg, (I cannot do splits and so that didn't feel so nice). they came out and cleaned up the water, and I didn't think of it at the time. 2 hours later my ankle and foot were getting pretty puffy and it was throbbing pretty well. We went home and iced it and I was on the couch for a few hours resting it. The swelling went down, but it still hurt.

John then walked in the house and stated "I stabbed myself". I leap (wobbley) off the couch, and hobble to him. He was using a sharp screwdriver and it slipped and it jammed into the flesh under his thumb and only stopped when it hit the bone. Of course, his hand are covered in grease and gasoline and are super dirty. We both hobble\walk to the bathroom and I try to wash his hand off as well as I can. At the site of the puffy gash bleeding all over the sink, he needs to lay on the couch. I hobble off to get rags and something for him to drink to bring his blood sugar back up. I call my mom and between her advice, WebMD and me, John and I decide to head off to the ER. (for a tetanus shot if nothing else- but I thought he would need some stitches)

So we go off to the ER. I hobble in with a ice pack on my leg, and him with a towel wrapped around his hand- we made quite a picture- and after about 25 minutes we went into have his hand looked over. They decided to not give stitches (because he may have some zinc bits in his hand), the cleaned it well (twice actually) and gave him a shot and we got to go home.

So- people laugh when I mention a Palm desert curse- but I beginning to think that if my parents keep going to PD that one of these days it is going to kill me :)

UPDATE: My Dad says this is probably the last year they will go - Thank goodness! I may make it yet. But I still have 2 weeks to try survive this last trip they take- I am worried about what can go wrong in 2 weeks :)

Here is John and I in the ER. I had my leg still elevated with a ice pack while sitting next to him, and John was still holding the rag to his hand while we were waiting for his Tetanus shot. We made a pretty sad pair :)