Trivial Mishaps, Mischance And Misfortune

When it rains, it pours, it seems.  Mishaps, mischance and misfortune like Rabelais said, never come alone!

They come totally unexpected, suddenly disrupting our everyday lives and throwing us into time spent fixing them we ordinarily would avoid like the plague.

October is a transition month, so not surprisingly there are serious earthly rumbles of hurricanes, floods and other tragedies beset upon those very unlucky ones caught in dire and deadly situations recently played out across the world.

I often think that our personal life is but a mere reflection of the ongoing universal chaos of the cosmos, on a smaller scale, that none of us can totally escape.

They ruffle the routine waters of our lives because they disrupt the fine intricate mechanism of living that we try to assure ourselves of maintaining.

A wrench is thrown into the internal wheel of our everyday life that hums along most of the time, like a mechanical clock.

We all have them from time to time, unfortunately. Most are trivial and just frustrating and annoying more than damaging.

The flat tires, sprung leaks, dead batteries, broken windows, leaky roofs, overdrawn accounts, being bumped from flights, broken glassware, lost keys and well the list goes on!

In quantum physics, there is supposedly order in chaos.  Random breakages and upsets do seem to clump together as in a pattern.

Such is life and the cosmos, where the natural laws of nature rule despite man’s attempt to control it.

In the longitudinal spectrum of our lives, there will be losses and setbacks, gains and peaks, and sometimes long bleak plateaus before changes occur.

Persistence, perseverance, hope, and faith can sustain us through the real tragedies of our lives; whereas tolerance, acceptance and even laughter is called for the rest.

Fighting and resisting only serves to fatigue our efforts to turn the tide of fortune to a more benevolent course of flow.

Active ongoing resistance is often a precipitating factor of mounting an even higher wall of resistance.

Going with the flow, acceptance as best you can and believing that our lives do change sometimes with as much luck as they do with misfortune.

Mishaps are like turbulence in the skies when you fly.  You just have to accept that sometimes, things will not go smoothly or not at all.

You will be uncomfortable for a while and maybe fearful of the outcome, but just have to put on your seat belt and ride the turbulent upset out.

Aeronautical engineers know that in flying, the plane Will encounter turbulence, some mild to very severe.  That is why airplanes are all designed to withstand forceful winds.

The wings may shake and the entire plane may shudder with sudden drops and uplifts, but soon the fierce turbulent winds will subside to smoothness.

Anger is defeating and a waste of time; patience is called for and time to find some solutions to the challenges thrown your way.

I had a few annoying mishaps happen all this week, and thankfully they were all trivial!

I witnessed some others that brought looks of disbelief and then others with fear.

I feel silly even writing about mine because they were all insignificant, but one ended up very time consuming on my part to fix it, which turned out to be a big mistake!

I have not written in totality about my beloved green jungle that seems to keep expanding on my balcony.

In order to keep it all pretty and healthy, it requires a lot of regular watering.  In the past, I use to lug around heavy water pails to water each plant, from the kitchen sink to the balcony.

It got old and very tiresome, so I got my very nice Moldavian renovator to install an outdoor faucet on the balcony wall.

Turned out marvelous, and made watering so much easier for me! It has only been two years since, and I have already gone through two garden hoses.

The first ordinary rubber one froze, breaking the plastic faucet attachment. I should have known better and brought it inside.

The second one I bought was one of those “extendible” hoses, that grow longer when you turn the water on, and then shrink back when the pressure is turned off.

It worked great for about 5 or 6 months before it sprung a leak. I had read before I bought one, that they were fragile, but wanted to take my chances.

Amazon France doesn’t even have the page any more of the one I bought; an obvious bad sign that they were discontinued.

I was indeed very naive and stupid in trying to fix the leak, having seen some youtube videos of how to do it.

In order to get the right size though of connectors and clamps, it took me four trips to Leroy Merlin, the Home Depot type store that is overly popular in Paris.

Getting there is easy, as it is an easy ride on the bus or metro to the store across the Pompidou Center.  Getting out of the store isn’t!

I hate going there because of the horribly long lines, fighting the crowds, especially on the weekends and having to chase down a sales person to answer questions.

Because it is like a beehive of swarming fellow beings on the weekend, it is difficult to even edge in to see stuff on display and not bumping into them in the process.

One thing in their favour though,  is that they take back merchandise, no questions asked, which is a rarity here in Paris and all of France.

Anybody who lives here has awful tales of trying to make exchanges or returning defective merchandise.

The prevailing philosophy in France for the most part is that the client is always wrong and should be eyed suspiciously.

After 4 trips to Leroy, I finally got the right size tube connector and clamps, and with some elbow grease got the two ends of the rubber tube connected and clamped.

It all looked promising until I turned up the water to make the hose longer.

Suddenly I saw a blue balloon growing larger and larger that suddenly burst leaving my extendible hose looking like a blown up and shriveled blue snake.

So it was back to Leroy Merlin once again on Saturday afternoon when the check out line slithered all the way down the middle aisle!

This time with the intent to get another ordinary garden hose small enough for the balcony. No more extendible ones for me!

Fortunately, I can meditate, pray or tune out in line while waiting.  Afterward, I was tempted to treat myself to a Lebanese rose yogurt ice cream at Bachir nearby, except there was another long line of course!

None of this caused me any loss of sleep, just a big loss of time, as what may take a few minutes to accomplish in the states, is usually quadrupled in time to do so here.

Nice to know that I wasn’t the only one in the neighborhood with mishaps and annoyances.

Delivery of a huge and very heavy palm tree to landscape the newly renovated gare(station) of the old Petite Ceinture railway next door was so poorly planned that it had to left on its side till yesterday.

The palm tree versus men saga took on laughable shades and eye-rolling of those of us gathered to watch this quirky scene.

The crowd gathered around could only shake their heads, seeing up to 8 strong bodied looking men trying multiple times to tilt the very tall palm tree upright in its pot without success.

Besides the obvious poor planning, it also posed a dangerous threat had it fallen and taken a roll along the sidewalk.

Later on, Aimée set a newly bought cactus arrangement in front of a fan she was cleaning that fell and decapitated a thick stalk of cactus.

Then Sunday morning as I was walking down Rue Alesia, I saw multiple fire trucks and fireman feverously working to extinguish a fire that was producing a fair amount of smoke coming from a tall apartment building.

When you see that, it puts all those silly frustrating annoyances in their proper perspective.

With nothing very exciting nor enticing enough for me to venture out, I spent Sunday afternoon baking and then assembling a beautiful and very delicious hazelnut torte with light chocolate mascarpone filling and icing.

I had recently returned from a hazelnut forest in Champagne on a truffle hunt, and hazelnut desserts had been on my mind.

Since I had a stash of some prized ones from the Piedmont area of Italy, I ended up creating a lovely torte of my own invention, as usual not following any recipe per sae.

I  filled and iced my torte on my dining room table to get away from the heat of my kitchen that could melt my cream.  Inevitably chocolate got smeared on one of my favourite placemats.

Pushing it aside, to take another photo, it apparently caught fire by a lit tea candle. Fortunately, I was able to smother it quickly, frightening me how easily one could accidentally start a fire that I had just witnessed 8 hours earlier!

After the fright, I resigned to pay more attention to lit candles that adorn my table each night; pretty to look but capable of danger as well!

The torte was really sublime if I may say so, and worth all the time spent in bringing it into creation.

Trivial mishaps and misfortunes are just bumps on the road and a part of life for us to develop tolerance and acceptance of events out of our control.

Worse things do happen and so you have to adapt just shrugging your shoulders and even laughing at it all.

For me, I spent the rest of the night celebrating the moment of a fine meal, good wine and my divine hazelnut torte, all enjoyed in the soft glow of candlelight.