Macbeth

… and now our goddamn washer broke. Great!

We resolved this pretty fast. It broke Sunday and by Wednesday, we had the new one. I was still less than happy about the expense because nobody likes to shell out for new appliances at the spur of the moment. I didn’t want to wait to get a new one because it’s annoying to live without a washer and have to wash your clothes at Laundromats and parents’ houses. We went without a dishwasher and dryer for months because there are other ways to dry clothes and wash dishes but I’ll be damned if I’m beating my clothes on a rock.

I guess it wasn’t that much of a surprise that the thing finally went. The old washer was so ‘70s that I’m surprised it didn’t come in avocado green. We got six years out of it after moving into our house so we can’t really complain because even when we moved in, it looked like it wasn’t long for this world. It had started doing weird things lately like getting stuck on the first cycle for 45 minutes so I had a feeling it was on its last legs.

The washer is about the last major appliance in our house to go. We already replaced the dryer, dishwasher and oven. We even bought a new HVAC system and windows and replaced some old water pipes just for the hell of it. The one replacement that still looms: The hot water heater.

Steve tells me not to say that too loud because the hot water heater might very well break. But what the hell. In the spirit of Friday the 13^th, I’m going to break a bunch of superstitions today.

I don’t think I’m terribly superstitious, aside from my quirk of leaving the room during a tied Phillies or Eagles game when the team might be about to score (this has worked and I have missed a few great plays but my team has still won, which is what matters). I sort of believe in jinxes, like not saying someone will win something because then they will lose. But this may be due more to my pessimistic nature than anything else. Of course, I do have religious beliefs that some people might see as superstitious.

I don’t believe at all in things like Friday the 13^th being bad luck. In our house, it’s usually a holiday and Steve watches the titular movies. Plus, how bad can Friday the 13^th really be? It’s still a Friday so for most people, the work week is over. I don’t think 13 is an unlucky number and would get a kick out of staying on the 13^th floor in any hotel that would have one.

I don’t care about black cats (good, considering that Cerys is a few white patches and stripes away from being black) or breaking mirrors or walking under ladders or anything like that. I don’t even think about that stuff.

One superstition I scoff at is the idea that saying Macbeth during a play or rehearsal is bad luck. Most performers have been on shows that have had so many disastrous moments that how could mentioning Macbeth by name have made things any worse? It just used to amuse the piss out of me when people minced around saying “the Scottish play.” There were enough people in all those years of theater that I couldn’t stand that I regret not stripping naked and yelling “MACBETH” repeatedly while forming a conga line, just to horrify those people.

In fact, I will now make up for some lost opportunities.

MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH! MACBETH!

And if the Macbeth superstition doesn’t horrify you, the image of me screaming it, naked with ass wiggling, should.