Just Call Me "The Cooler"

First day back from spring break--I've needed a lot of caffeine to get through. It's actually good to be back, tired though I am, because this break goes down in career history for me as the Worst. Break. Ever.

I knew even before we went to the gambling boat on our one day of scheduled and child-free fun that my luck was on a downswing. I didn't need the Wheel of Fortune slot machine to confirm that (though it did.) My librarian friend? Now, she can put $6 into said slot machine and turn it into a small fortune, but me...not so much. My own Wheel of Fortune has turned, my friends, and things aren't pretty.

My spring break week was darn near a catastrophe. Some of it I brought on myself--why on earth did I decide spring break was the perfect time to try to cover our dark-teal third bedroom with pale yellow paint? But most was just out of my control. We found shingles on our deck during spring cleaning and spotted more trouble up on the roof itself, so it appears as though we're going to need a new roof. Ainsley and I got stranded at an IHOP. A family member had to be hospitalized after 2 trips to the emergency room (she's on the mend now). And then the last straw: our dishwasher and garbage disposal died last night in what is appearing to be a connected electrical problem that will probably see us paying out the wazoo to an electrician. Yes, kids, I have been a magnet of misfortune.

As if to show me an example of bad luck in action, casual channel-flipping Saturday night brought us to a movie called The Cooler with William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin, and Maria Bello. In this movie, Macy plays a man hired by a tired Vegas casino to be a "cooler"--to basically place himself at hot tables to cool the luck and tip the scales back in the house's favor. With one brush against the roulette wheel, with one quarter in a slot machine, or one ten-dollar bet at the craps table, he can ruin a gambler's night. He was hand-selected for this job by Baldwin's character, a casino owner who takes pity on Macy's character after he loses tens of thousands of dollars to his own gambling addiction. Baldwin sees that the man's horrible luck can profit him and allows Macy to work for him to pay off his gambling debts. In turn, Macy breaks his addiction and realizes that the odds will never be in his favor.

I am starting to think that I, too, am a cooler. Instead of looking at this as a bad thing, maybe I should begin to put my bad luck to good use. I've already got the anti-Duke chili that seems to make for bad fortune for the Blue Devils; no telling what else I have in my arsenal. I shall have to experiment and see if I can spread my misfortune around to those who need taken down a notch or two.

Just maybe stay clear of me for a little while while I get this all figured out. I wouldn't want to cause the Wheel of Fortune to catch you on the way down.