Epic day of FAIL

Blurgh. Yesterday? Such a FAIL day. Nothing appeared to be going my way. I have to admit, I don’t really get in a funk that often. I mean, things bother me all the time–people being stupid on the subway, long lines at the bank, emails telling my bank account has dipped below $50 a week before payday–but I never seem to get down about them for too long. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m grumpy all the time, but I don’t feel like I am. Usually, I feel like, if you asked me to rate my life on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being THE WORST and 10 being TOTALLY AWESOME, I would probably put myself in the 5-6-7-8 range on an average day. Which isn’t too shabby.

But yesterday, oh my, for some reason, even though the things that happened weren’t that big of a deal, I just got so down about it.

First, my iPod is broken. Actually, it’s been broken for about a year now. I distinctly remember the headphone jack starting to crap out when I was in California last October on an extended unemployment holiday. I was taking my dog, Val, for a walk and then the audio on my iPod started going in and out. I thought it was the headphones, which were those cheap gummy kind JVC makes in a frillion different jelly bean colors that I hated that I ended up buying AGAIN about six months ago because they were $10, so I threw them out. It was not the headphones. It was the audio jack on the iPod. Eventually, it just settled on being broken so that I couldn’t hear out of the right headphone. That’s the way it’s been for a year until a few weeks ago, when it started getting crappy again, this time in both ears, and I’ve had to really jam the headphones in there to even get any sound out and I have to carry it very carefully so that the audio doesn’t kaput on me.

Okay, broken iPod. So, I let the Internet convince me that I could fix the problem myself–just order a new headphone jack/hold switch online, pop open the iPod, install the new jack, problem solved. NOT SO, my friends, not so.

A. Who knew an iPod was so damn hard to open? It’s a Herculean task. My friend Sunil finally got it open with the help of about three of those green “non-marring pry tools” they sent me (i.e. little green plastic things that are supposed to help you open it but have no leverage because they are made out of soft plastic that is supposed to not damage your iPod but instead prevents them from doing their job).

B. Immediately when we opened the iPod, two tiny black screws fell out. I would later discover that those screws are supposed to hold in the audio jack. So, who wants to be that my problem isn’t the jack, it’s the fact that the screws had come undone? But I bought the new jack, you know I was going to use it.

C. Trying to replace your iPod’s screen (like my friend Mary did herself) is one thing; futzing around with the intestines of your iPod is probs not a good idea for a rank amateur. I don’t THINK I caused any damage, but there’s really no way of knowing. I followed the instructions, that’s all I can say.

D. I got the headphone jack removed and went to put the new one in and…it’s defective! Excitement. On the 30G iPod video 5G, the headphone jack and hold switch come in one piece, so you have to replace them together. Fine, whatever, except the one I had ordered didn’t come with a hold switch. So I couldn’t even fix the iPod yesterday and it’s sitting in my desk drawer at work in pieces and that made me feel really pathetic and small for some reason. The place I ordered it from promised to ship me a new one yesterday, but I probably won’t get it until tomorrow.

Okay, so if that wasn’t FAIL enough, I went home and decided to make some pasta for dinner. Except that I have a very tiny kitchen, so my strainer, which has a long handle like a saucepan instead of two handles, one on each side, like a reasonable strainer, sits on my stove in a frying pan when it’s not in use. I was boiling water right in front of the strainer and the metal handle got too close to the steam rising up from the boiling water and of course, because it is METAL, it heated up and so when I went to pick up the strainer to put it over the sink of course it was very very hot and I burned my hand. I ALWAYS DO THIS WHY WON’T I LEARN. Man.

And then–you guys, this is not over, the FAILing–I was cleaning a wine glass and it broke because it’s from IKEA and made from glass as thin as fairy wings, apparently, and a jagged shard sliced up my hand. And I was bleeding so much and had to put on several Band-Aids, one-handed, to cover the cut up and after I’d doused it in anti-bacterial wash (Band-Aid makes a really great ouch-free kind, BTW) and afixed all the bandages I just wanted to sit down on the floor of my bedroom and cry and cry and cry.

But I didn’t. I went into the kitchen, threw away the wine glass, took the trash out, went to the store to buy toilet paper because we were out, came home and called a friend to share this EDoF. Seriously, she answered the phone and it all came tumbling out, “My iPod’s broken and I burned myself making dinner and I sliced my hand open on a broken wine glass…and I can’t figure out what comes next in my new book!”

And it is thus that I discovered my real problem.