On Notice: That American Express Commercial, and also, DJ Lance Rock.

I recently hit upon some odd cluster of household failures, not unlike that American Express commercial where all the broken inanimate objects make sad faces. But damn you, American Express commercial, because everything just seems to work out for the owners of Edgar Allen Pocketbook, Grumpy the Vacuum, and Eeyore the Clinically Depressed Couch, doesn't it? WHAT ABOUT ME?

My friends, in the past few weeks, I’ve watched my Canon Digital Rebel inexplicably die (I tried a new battery. No dice.) and my MacBook present me with a delightful gray screen/blinky file folder-with-question-mark combo.( We do have a point-and-shoot camera and another laptop, but I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I express my desire to have these relatively young and not cheap technological devices to, you know, work.)

The camera will need to be replaced entirely, it seems, and the MacBook—which will be undergoing its second repair in a year—can likely be salvaged, but not without a trip to the Genius Bar, and then I'll have to deal with the geniuses and their hair product and witty t-shirts and rare sneakers that are only sold by one guy named, like, Pauly J., out of a hidden telephone booth in the East Village, and you just know they're gonna do that thing where they judge me for having a messy-looking desktop, only they won't SAY it, they'll just communicate it with their eyebrows. And possibly, hair product. Which--who knows?--they could have ALSO applied to their eyebrows. And then--adding insult to injury, they'll charge me $400 and possibly, one kidney, whilst judging me. SUCK.

Then there was The Thing With The Bed.

Our bedframe collapsed, and let me just tell you, if you’d like to have all manner of people make inappropriate comments to you? Tell them that. Tell them your bed broke, and YOUR OWN VERY PIOUS MOTHER, for instance-- that same, sweet mother who prays daily, and sends you superhelpful advice about how maybe you shouldn’t curse on your blog because then Oprah and/or Ellen won’t discover you, but also, then she can’t show your “blogs” to her friends-- will say something AWFUL involving a lot of snickering and the word “adventurous,” and then you’ll probably want to die, but also, throw up, and you won’t be able to make a decision between the two, as you try to tell her—and other, snickering people, such as the jerks selling you a new bedframe, curious neighbors, and your handyman who's assisting in the assembly of Bed #2,-- that no, NO, you weren’t Doing It Cullen-Style, but really just sitting there reading TO AND WITH THE CHILDREN, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD—when the bed suddenly broke. We’re now the proud owners of a new bedframe, but sadly, our dignity was lost along with the splintered shards of Bed #1.

Obviously, our ghost has a hand in all three events, and I’m trying to figure out what we’ve done to anger it.

Since I’m clearly crotchety right now, let me also direct a brief message to the folks over at Yo Gabba Gabba: The show generally has a creepy Poltergeist-like hold on my children's attention spans, but they've become particularly obsessed with the food episode featuring "Party in my Tummy," a song wherein (I can't even believe I'm talking about this) various foods come alive and want to be ingested, so as to...go to the party in the tummy. Some of the foods cry, specifically because they haven't yet been eaten, and WANT to be, so as to attend the apparently wiiiiild Tummy Party.

My son has since taken to wandering over to J and I with lollipops/cookies/M&Ms, and telling us in the gravest of tones that the treat in question is sad because it wants to go to the party in his tummy. THANKS A BUNCH, DJ LANCE ROCK. YOU JERK.