A Week of SNAFU

Though I scoff and laugh at my purported psychic friends who tell me Mercury is in retrograde and I should make no decisions because everything will have glitches in it, this has been a week that I questioned my belief system. As the WW2 acronym says, everything was SNAFU, and in this case the F does not stand for "fouled" but the more colorful original verb.

I remember, or imagine I do, the expression coming into use in my childhood. Its actual origin is controversial. This is supposed to be the first printed version of it:


Frederick Elkin noted in 1946 that there "are a few acceptable substitutes such as 'screw up' or 'mess up,' but these do not have the emphasis value of the obscene equivalent." He considered the expression SNAFU to be "a caricature of Army direction. The soldier resignedly accepts his own less responsible position and expresses his cynicism at the inefficiency of Army authority." He also noted that "the expression ... is coming into general civilian use."


For me, Thursday was the corker.  A dental appointment I had scheduled for four months to replace a four tooth bridge in the front of my mouth got cancelled because the dental lab cracked the bridge. The dentist goes on vacation now for two weeks, of course.  


Then about 11 am my computer and phones went out.  It took a couple of hours to figure out my housekeeper had accidentally disconnected them.


I thought my luck had changed when the UPS driver brought my replacement generation two kindle which I ordered from the Amazon marketplace, as they do not make this model any more.  I 
had broken  mine the week before. I couldn't get it to register and after several frantic calls to Amazon I discovered I had been sent a stolen device.  Amazon will eventually make it good, but it will take a while. More glitches followed.  It got so I was afraid to take a glass of water.  So I sat quietly at my computer (see the self photo) feeling perplexed and writing silly lists of disclosures for the realtor. 
(There are wood rats and pine bark beetles here but no ghosts). 
Later in the day my broker arrived with four other brokers from her office to look over the property 

in preparation for staging and marketing.  I was sure they would fall or get stung by a yellow jacket but nothing untoward happened that I know of.  I will be glad when next week arrives and life returns to normal.  Oh, do you promise it will?