Broken Chronicle

My camera just decided to stop working on Thursday, swear I didn't do anything to it! This is the one I bought just at the end of May, because the one I had before had stopped working during at the School Sports Day after I was a little too encouraging with the sometimes-sticky lens, the lens that got sticky when I left it face down on my udon tray in Takamatsu, only for the udon to slosh out and splash it: this being the camera I had bought in the New Year Sale last year after getting the one before it stolen at Disneyland in Hong Kong. Which is the one I'd bought to replace the one I'd broken when I dropped it into a river while pregnant. At least I wasn't responsible for the breakage of the first one - a friend kindly took care of that for me, though leaving it on the edge of a table with the lens open was probably not a wise choice on my behalf.

But everything seems to be breaking on me lately! Why do appliances break in sets? Microwave, dishwasher, mixer and blender all went together last year. Going out in sympathy? Not counting lightning strikes, I seem to be having just one thing after another go wacky on me lately.

iPhone is playing up. We made an effort to get it fixed, went to the shop, who got us to call the helpline. Between me not understanding the polite language and Kanji having no idea how to work the phone, we failed. It's okay, I said, I can handle no sound in the apps and the sticky home screen button. But now the alarm and phone sounds sometimes don't work. Nor the vibe. What good is a phone if no-one can call you?

Need new glasses. Okay, so in this case they did not break, I left them on top of the car when I was putting on sunscreen and then left them there. I blame Kanji of course. It was his clever idea to put sunscreen on RIGHT NOW and not when we got there, and then he finished of course, while I was still pottering about trying to get it on the kids, then I got Erica into her carseat, still unfinished, and by this time our friends were ready to go, so into the car I hopped and no more glasses!

Car door stuck again. This happened last year too! I can handle the passenger's side door being stuck, not the driver's side though - but last year after we got the passenger's side door fixed, the driver's side got stuck, so fingers crossed it doesn't get stuck again soon, or I'll be climbing in to drive through the back door over Erica's carseat, eek!

Smashed a heater clearing out the shed, and one electric fan gave up the ghost this year.

Washing machine making ominous noises, a huge GYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE when you turn it on. Dodgy.

My Wifi router broke. This was before the lightning strike, so I can't blame that. After our friendly computer guy showed me what to order online, I did so, only to find in the confirmation email that I had inadvertently ordered two! This was not a language fault, it's pretty bloody obvious when you have two of something in your shopping basket in any language. It was language though that made fixing it near to impossible. I tried replying the the email - got that email back. No contact email anywhere! I went back to the website and found the contact button, filled in all the fields, but still they two routers turned up next day. I gave one to the guy who fixed our computer. Then found another one in the cupboard that I think belongs to AFWJ...

The tape player doesn't go. That doesn't sound like a big deal of course, except that with no TV, I was going to listen to the books on tape that we inherited a while ago. So I went out and bought another one, a little cheap one... only it doesn't go. And I lost the receipt because I bought it the day before the Gion party. Yes, yes, I do really need to be a bit, no a LOT more careful with receipts!!

So next I tried the MD, as I also inherited a collection of audio books on MD. No luck. Hopefully I will soon be inheriting a new tape/CD/MD player off a friend. With my luck, it'll be broken by the time it gets here.