This week I…

… broke my mouse.
My computer mouse, I mean. Not an actual, real-life mouse. Because I don’t have an actual, real-life mouse. If I did, though, I’d be advising that actual mouse to get the hell out of my actual house, or I’d probably end up breaking it, too. Seriously, it’s been that kind of week. Because a few days after I broke the mouse, I…

… spilled coffee on my keyboard, thus rendering it inoperable
Keyboards don’t like coffee so much. Which sucks for them, because honestly, if you’re in my house, you’re probably going to get coffee spilled on you at some point. Possibly at multiple points. And if you’re clothes, and you happen to live in my house, you’re probably going to get a Mark of Death on you at some point. Remember the White Mark of Death? Well, this time it wasn’t it. No, this time I…

… discovered a Black Mark of Death on one of my dresses
Yes, A BLACK mark, readers. Not our old friend, the Common-or-Garden White Mark of Death, but a black one just like it. And no, I have no idea what the Black Mark of Death is. All I know is that when I put the dress on, it was in perfect, pristine condition, but when I took it off? Whoop, there it is! Black mark of death right here! Unfortunately for me (and for my dress, now I come to think of it), the BMOD is made of far sterner stuff than my keyboard, say, or its accompanying mouse. The BMOD survived two trips through the wash, and a fair amount of scrubbing with various detergents without fading even a little bit. The dress is now under the expert care of my long-suffering mother, and you will all find out its fate when I do. If, of course, the suspense doesn’t kill you first.

That dress wasn’t the only item of clothing to suffer this week, though. No, shortly after that happened, I…

… discovered a second Black Mark of Death on a pair of jeans
At this point I’m going to give you all a few moments to just sit there and silently bang your heads against your desks in sheer frustration. That’s certainly what I did when I discovered this Second Mark. (And again, no idea what it is or how it got there. It is one of the great mysteries of our time. Well, one of the great mysteries of this blog, anyway.) And seriously, I have to admit I’m actually starting to feel victimised by my clothes now. It’s like they’re out to get me in some strange, malevolent kind of way. I’m being TARGETED, people: targeted by black and white marks of death, and it’s now reached the stage where I can’t seem to wear ANYTHING more than once, because as soon as I put something on, I almost instantly ruin it. GOD.

[Edited to add: I’ve tried numerous different stain removers on these Marks Of Death, but the problem with jeans is that most stain removers don’t just remove the stain – if, indeed, they DO remove the stain – they also remove the dye from the denim, so the mark is gone, but I’m left with a faded patch where the denim is lighter than the surrounding area. It’s a dilemma.]

Those jeans weren’t the only thing I ruined that day, though. No, just a few short hours before I made the grizzly discovery of the BMOD, I …

…spilled an entire bottle of heavily perfumed body lotion on my bed.
Yeah, don’t ask. Now, under normal circumstance (or if, you know, I was a normal PERSON, say…) I’d just have taken off the bedsheets and put them straight into the wash. On this particular day, though, we were having some friends round, and they were due to arrive any minute, so I didn’t have time to start wrestling with bedsheets and changing duvet covers. Instead, I scrubbed frantically at the body lotion (I say “body lotion”. It was really more of an oil, which explains both how it managed to empty itself so damn quickly, and what happened later…) with some tissues, and to my joy, it seemed to work. The duvet was dry to the touch, the lotion didn’t seem to have left a stain… the sheets were now absolutely reeking of perfume, but I figured we could live with it for one night, and then I’d change the sheets first thing in the morning: sorted.

It wasn’t until Terry and I stumbled to bed at around 1am that morning that I peeled back the duvet, and… came face to face with a GIANT, heavily-scented stain, right on my side of the mattress. Yep: the reason the duvet had felt dry to the touch was that the body lotion had sunk right through it, and ended up on the sheet underneath it. Which, naturally, had to be changed, but not until it had made the entire mattress smell… well, really quite lovely, actually, but damn, that stuff was strong. And there’s a reason they call it “body lotion”, not “mattress, duvet and everything else” lotion, you know?

That wasn’t all, though. No, on the same day I perfumed my mattress and discovered the Black Mark of Death on my jeans, I also…

… broke two glasses. Yes, simultaneously.
And no, I wasn’t even drunk at the time.

Finally, in what has to be my stupidest act EVER, I…

…got out of bed on Tuesday morning and reached into the bathroom cabinet for the small, white tube of eye drops the optician prescribed for my very dry eyes. I tipped my head back, squeezed the tube…

… and only as the liquid inside made contact with my skin, did I realise that this was NOT the small white tube of eye drops I was holding, but the almost identical small white tube of eye CREAM. Which is not designed to be applied to the eyeball, no siree. Also: ouch.

Luckily for me, the consistency of eye cream prevents it from spreading too far in a hurry (unlike my old friend body lotion, say…), so it didn’t actually make contact with my eye, choosing instead to cling helplessly to my eyelashes going, “The HELL? What am I doing HERE? How can one woman be SO STUPID?”

The eye cream poses a good question. It’s a question I have yet to find an answer to, although one thing I DO know is that if these things come in threes, as people always say, I’ve had more than my share, thanks, universe. In fact, YOU OWE ME.