A series of malefic miracles

Things are moving backward.  Unravelling.  At the beginning of the year it seemed so attainable.  Finish everything on the list.  Free myself for a future.  Stupid house things.  I worked so hard to get all those little nagging projects finished.  And I was very close!  You know I had only three things left on my list? 

Then for no obvious reason, things start moving rapidly backwards.  All the sheets in the cupboard go musty-smelling, while simultaneously I get acutely ill.  My mother offers to soak and wash the sheets.  When she returns them, (and after I thanked her profusely) I find she’s mistakenly taken the pillowcases to my gorgeous hand-dyed embroidered doona cover, and ruined them.  All that thick embroidery bleached to a sick yellow.  It was one of the few really pretty things I had, and I was really attached to it.  It had taken me over two years to find. 

I finally bought the outdoor chairs I’d been shopping for for several months.  The salesman recommended oiling them with decking oil.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle the fumes from the Bunnings-variety stuff.  So I trekked to Newtown to get the Greenest stuff I could find.  I used it today and found that firstly, the fumes are so strong I can’t think straight hours later.  Secondly, despite the fact I went for "natural" coloured stuff, it has colouring in it, which rubs off the chair I oiled.  So I’m just hoping that that won’t happen after it’s soaked in for a day or two.  If it does, I don’t know what I’ll do.  The manufacturer will probably just tell me the stuff was never designed for anything you plan to sit on. 

The desk I ordered last August has still not been finished, and it’s looking like it’s not going to be.  I think it will end up with the Consumer Affairs Office.  Last December the shop tried to pass off a really shoddy piece that was not even made to plan.  I protested and they promised to start from scratch and build it properly.  Last week the shop says their supplier has – after taking over two months to build it – just tried to pass off the same shoddy thing as before – no rebuilding, nothing.  He’s just hoping I’ll get so frustrated I’ll pay for whatever rubbish he produces. 

Oh, and to top it all off?  I’m rapidly putting on weight, for no reason I can see.  I’ve put on 3kg in about as many weeks.  This is scaring me.  I’m almost at a record high in weight, and I’m eating reasonably healthy and not terribly much.  It just keeps going up and up. 

I just can’t understand what’s going wrong.  I wanted to finish off the old and make room for the new.  I was powering ahead, going so well and now it’s just unravelling before my eyes.  Life shouldn’t be this hard!  Seriously, something is very strange here.  I don’t believe in luck, good or bad.  But something is profoundly stretching the fabric of reality here.  This is bordering on the ludicrous.