"Some days take less, but most days take more
Some slip through your fingers and onto the floor." *

There are moments in life when you feel irony happening around you. Annoyances, difficulties and unpleasant surprises seem to happen in threes. The triptych of misery happens just close enough together so a person is fully aware the third thing is coming.

My last day working for The Gazette ended up a full pool of ironies and honesties swimming around like goldfish waiting to be gobbled up by hungry ducks. When I left in the morning and my car didn't quite want to start, it was the premonition I did not want to acknowledge.

Had I just been leaving for work, it would have been a little funny my car was cranky on the last day of my old job. However, I was taking Jane to the vet. She is 8 and needed a split molar extracted (ouch) and skin bumps removed. I dropped the poor dog off, who was in a surprisingly good mood and got the bad news from the vet there were more than one or two of her skin bumps needing to come off. Envisioning "frankendoggie" I signed the surgery permission slip.

I get in my car knowing I would head straight to the mechanic. My fuel pump had been on the blink for about 18 months. The gas gauge has not worked. I do gas mileage by mental math. This system only failed me once when I neglected to take into consideration having the car in four-wheel-drive eats a lot more gasoline. A LOT more.

I turn the key. The engine tries to turn over... but it doesn't. And it doesn't. And it doesn't. I could be in disbelief but the car has 130,000 miles on it. The fuel pump can actually legitimately be dead. I go back into the vet, get a phone book, call a tow truck and leave my keys with the kind ladies at the front desk. The raspy towing dude said it'd be two hours easily before they could come get my big green GMC floundering flounder.

Boyfriends occasionally come in really handy for things like getting stranded when your car breaks down. Not everyone's journalist boyfriend shows up with a story about how his morning included reporting on a dead body at a gory local murder scene.

Gore would be revisited later when I picked my poor Jane up from the veterinarian. She had the tooth extraction, which all by itself would be painful. On top of it, she has seven 5-inch incisions all over her body, three on the right rear leg from the removal of mast cell tumors. The vet was great and kept me posted through the surgery, but no one prepares you for this - and I am typically a person of strong constitution when it comes to blood and guts. There was the moment, too, when the vet said the "C" word was confirmed.

She looks like frankendoggie.

There was chocolate on my desk when I arrived at work and a number of people with sincere well wishes and an enjoyable goodbye lunch. My answer to "How are you?" was always "Fine" instead of "Secretly going nuts." Through the day I could not help but laugh a lot to myself. I was left wondering if it is insane to find amusement in your own confused misery.

Don't get me wrong -I'm not complaining. I just start lumping all the stress into one place and sometimes it feels like I need to take up drinking or knife-throwing. I am sure the person whose head I bit off for nagging me over e-mail for a puppy will get over it. The mechanic who I snarled the remark would be "the last person" I should ask about which new car to buy won't lose any sleep.

And, yes, all of that is still only the tip of the iceberg.

*Apologies to Bono.