Good luck, bad luck, no luck at all

“If it wasn’t for bad luck. You know, I wouldn’t have no luck at all” is a line from a song – Born Under a Bad Sign. Link to song is included. Great song.

I’ve always thought of myself as lucky. I’m an optimist. I’m positive. I’ve been spared a lot of pain experienced by others. I feel lucky that I had loving and supportive parents, that I was born a free woman in the United States, that I was given opportunities for a good education and rewarding employment. And I have the best children in the world. Sorry, but it’s true. For better or for worse, I’ve gotten most of the things I’ve ever really wanted.

Looking at my life through an objective lens, however, there have been some things…Shit seems to happen to me, small things, but they add up when looked at in their totality. Just in the past couple of years I’ve had the my car robbed; I’ve had all sorts of trouble with my car (s) – my Peugeot just got out of the shop AGAIN after it died on the highway: I’ve had so many faulty air conditioner(s); and I’m sure there’s more…Just saying that sometimes I look up and see that small cloud following me. But I just gotta keep going and smiling.

I recently received some more bad news, devastating news really. My beloved dog, Cassie, has a cancerous tumor in her kidney and metastases in her lungs and lymph nodes. She is not a candidate for surgery, but we are going to be treating her with a cancer medication used to shrink cancer cells. First me with my stomach cancer, now her – we’re a pair – a pair of tough, old broads. Cassie is 14, and I know it’s not curable, but I’m hopeful we can have a little more time together. She’s my girl.

Speaking of aging and death, have you heard of Maria Branya Morera? She was a Catalan woman who when she died last year at the age of 117, was the oldest human on earth. She was born in the U.S. to a family of Catalan origin who moved back to Spain when she was young. She made Barcelona her home and died in Olot, Spain, a town not far from where I live. She identified as Catalan, using the name “Super Catalan Grandma” on social media. 

Lots of medical professionals studied Maria before her death, trying to determine how she managed to live so long. Clearly, part of the reason was heredity – she was simply born an incredibly durable woman with a fantastic immune system. But one of the factors to which Maria herself attributed her long life was that she ate plain yogurt three times a day. Scientists have agreed that having a healthy, effective microbiome is definitely a booster for good overall health. She ate a certain brand of yogurt, Fageda. I read that its sales skyrocketed when this information about Maria became known. So I’ve started buying it too. I’m not sure if strawberry-flavored counts, but I can’t stomach (ha ha) the plain. It looks and tastes too much like milk. Horrors. And I’m not going to eat it three times a day. But maybe once a day with fresh strawberries will bring my life expectancy closer to 100!