Sh!t Happens

Posted on January 14, 2026 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | Leave a comment

Two days ago, I planned to write and publish a post yesterday on a different subject, but as the sentiment “Sh!t Happens”¹ goes, life interferred yet once again and my plans got kaboshed by a series of aggravating semi-catastrophies that left me in an entirely different mood and thoughts on my mind. My detour began when:

I got in my car to go to Speech Therapy appointment and discovered that the electronic keypad portion to start my car had somehow broken off from emergency door key on my keychain and been lost. That meant my car could not be started or driven – not even hot-wired sinced there is no place to insert a key or pull out wires to cross.
Since it is not a matter of simply getting a new key made, I learned my car would have to be towed to the Subaru Dealer to get a new electronic transmitter programmed, I called my insurance company to start the process via their Road Assist provider to order a tow truck.
Next complication, my car was parked in a multi-story parking garage at my apartment that has a 7’2″ height limitation at the entry & exit gates, car was parked facing forward against a concrete wall, and could not be put into neutral gear because of missing transmitter. This meant a specific type of tow truck was required – one equipped with “skates” and NOT a flat-bed. Despite having given this heads-up to the dispatcher, it took almost 22 hours and 9 different tow-truck service providers to finally send the proper truck and a competent driver to finally show up and drop my car off at the Dealer.
I then learned that in order for them to make a new wireless transmitter for me, they had to entirely remove the “Keyless Access Control Unit” from the steering column, send it to the Subaru Factory to be zeroed out and returned to the Dealer for programming it specifically to my car: a process that will take 2 weeks for a total cost of just under $1700!! (forget all the various claims about replacing or re-programming electronic keyfobs by any other means than through a Subaru Dealer – they don’t work for any model newer than 2020 and are scams).
Because the loss of my original key/transmitter is not considered an insurance coverable expense, I am not only left to cover it out-of-pocket but also the cost of an interim rental car that will be around $650 for the period required.
Next complication, one can’t rent a car without a credit card (no one accepts cash) but as of just the day before this, I had to cancel not only my credit card but also my bank debit card because of my accounts having been hacked into by fraudsters and it takes up to 10 days to get new cards! AARRGH!
So what now? Both Uber and Lyft require a credit card to establish accounts. My son’s car is out of commission and also stuck at Dealer and he has no credit card or rental car. My sister-in-law doesn’t have a driver’s license. My closest friend who also is my home-care/health/transportation helper has been suddenly become unreachable since New Year’s Day (having her own personal and family emergency issues to deal with). I’ve already had to cancel 5 different medical appointments that had been scheduled for this week.

I am at my wits end. I don’t even have the emotional strength right now to properly rant about the violent idiocy that’s going on in our Country and the world. How pitiful is that? I am going to sign off now to pray to G-d that Little Orphan Annie was right: “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.”

“Sh!t Happens” another way of saying “Life Happens when you’re making plans“, “Man Plans, God Disrupts“, “Man Plans, God Laughs“, or many other variations of this saying. See history of these quotes. ↩︎

Virtual Green Healing

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | 5 Comments

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek – Date: Tues. June 5, 2012 6:18am

I’ll get to explaining the title of this post in a minute, but first, a little preamble is called for.

While I’ve been laying low in the background for a few months, I’ve been silently enjoying reading my favorite blogs (Dogkisses) and Green Healing Notes, along with a ton of books. If you’re a regular reader here at IconDoIt, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve mentioned Dogkisses several times and that the author of those two blogs is also a frequent commenter here. So what’s that all about, you might ask?

One of the greatest serendipities of writing a blog and commenting on blogs other than your own, is that you have the opportunity to come to know people from around the globe with whom you already have something in common (an interest in the subject of a particular post commented on). Now, the odds are pretty dang slim of that happening as you go about your daily routine and encounter previously unknown people at work, at the grocery store, etc. even if you are one of the rare folks who actually speaks to strangers! And when you find yourself commenting and/or receiving comments on more than one posting from the same person, you start to get to know them a bit and after a while, may find yourself communicating with them “off blog” and developing a deep friendship. For someone like myself, who has extremely limited face-to-face contact with anyone in the world beyond my front door, such opportunities and friendships are valuable beyond compare. This is how I first met and became friends with “Lady Dogkisses” (whom I’ll refer to as LDK for the sake of brevity).

From the outside looking in, it might appear that LDK and I have very little in common. I’m close to 20 years older, live in an upscale suburb of a large city on the north coast of Ohio while she lives in the mountains of North Carolina and struggles just to get by. Our ethnic backgrounds and religious upbringing couldn’t be more different and we have entirely different work backgrounds, skills and hobbies. But what we DO have in common is how we have reacted to the tragedies, outrages, and challenges in our lives; the basic principles that guide our decisions and actions; a strong spiritual connection with the earth and sky; and a tendency to want (and make our best attempts to) bring comfort to everyone who hurts and cure the world’s ills. Of course, this latter trait – which is an impossible task to ever fully accomplish, thus we are always feeling badly for our “failures” – often gets played out at the expense of our own personal best interests. And that’s why we need each other to remind us to give ourselves permission every once in a while to escape from our self-appointed burdens to pamper ourselves with some free time to “play” or do nothing at all, get some uninterrupted sleep, and have a few relaxed good meals with enjoyable company. Now THAT’s my definition of a “real” friend!

So now back to the title of this post, “Virtual Green Healing”. For several months now, Dogkisses has been writing a series of posts centered around the concept of “Green Healing” which is a way of cleansing oneself from all of the chaos of the man-made world and getting back to the core of our spirit through working with the earth, planting and growing, and taking the time to breathe in and breathe out along with the land and the creatures who inhabit it and make it work. LDK has embarked on a project to facilitate this Green Healing through volunteering, along with her adult son, in a horticulture program for folks with special needs. Now, I love a beautiful flower garden and eating fruits and vegetables fresh picked each day but its’ been over a dozen years since I’ve been physically been able to participate in that process and more than 20 years since I actually had the time, and even then, I never did have much of a green thumb. But my lack of gardening skills and infirmities have never gotten in the way of my love of nature and, in fact, one of the strongest images in my mind when I engage in guided imagery exercises to deal with chemotherapy and pain, is of walking in the woods along the Skyline Drive in Virginia on a clear, cool autumn day. I can just smell that clean air and hear the crunching of dried leaves beneath my feet and the honking of flocks of geese and ducks soaring way above the trees. And it is with this same imagination that I am taken into the garden alongside my friend and her son, whenever I read the latest posts on her blog and I feel myself healing right along with them. (Thanks LDK for sharing your experiences and letting me tag along for the ride!)

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Evil? Or Just An Eternal Toddler?

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Leslie Sigal Javorek | Leave a comment

Posted by: Leslie Sigal Javorek – Date: Sunday October 2, 2011 – 12:30am

Everyone wants to be heard; to know that their opinion matters, that THEY matter. But there is a difference between being “heard” (i.e. “understood”) vs. winning people over to agree with your opinion. It’s when people get these two concepts confused that problems arise.

Most of us learn at a very early age that we can’t always get our way, or at least we can’t always get what we want, when we want it or in the exact manner we want it. That’s what the so-called “Terrible Twos” is all about. The reason that you don’t hear about the Terrible Five’s, Ten’s, or Thirty’s, is because the majority of us figure out how to balance our personal needs and desires, with the needs and desires of our parents, siblings, neighbors, countrymen, and the world. It’s that simple but vital skill of Give-and-Take that distinguishes civilization from barbarism. It’s learning to play well with others.

Unfortunately, not everyone successfully learns the lessons necessary to progress past the stage where a toddler suddenly is faced with the fact that they are not the center of the world, and so these Eternal Toddlers [“ET’s”] continue to believe that everyone outside of themselves exists solely to satisfy their needs and desires. When confronted by the reality that they cannot make everyone snap to attention at their every beck and call, the ET ends up feeling constantly thwarted, oppressed, unappreciated, disrespected, and even abandoned. In turn, those feelings lead to intense, never-ending anger at those the ET perceives have come between them and their desires that they ultimately deal with by turning that anger back on others (in the form of adult temper tantrums or worse) and/or on themselves (i.e. self-loathing, severe depression, suicide). This is hardly a satisfying strategy to procure either the respect of others or a realistic sense of self-worth for the ET. As obvious as that equation may seem, ET’s rarely appear capable of recognizing the folly of that mindset or recalibrating their expectations and methods of communication that’s needed to escape the viscious circle they’re trapped in.

It is easy to fall into the trap of judging an ET – especially when you’re caught within the scope of an ET’s rage or continually compelled to witness the dark, disheartening world of an ET who has turned their rage inward. The inclination to yell “Snap out of it”, “Get Real”, “Grow-Up”, or “#!!?@!&!!! You!”, is understandable yet it’s foolish and counter-productive to give into your frustration that way, and can even be putting yourself at risk of great danger. So what can you do when your life crosses with an ET that won’t set you up as their Eternal Victim [“EV”]? The easy answer is to walk away and fuggetaboudit. But that’s not always possible, especially if you have conflicting feelings such as actually liking the person or even loving them, or if you’re stuck with having to deal with them for professional or other reasons. It’s heartbreaking to watch otherwise intelligent, decent people self-destruct and fearsome when an ET has the attitude of “Take No Prisoners”.

Lamentably, we are powerless to make the necessary changes for them. All we can do is try to be patient, to listen, to maintain our self-composure and dignity, to always maintain our self-respect, try to protect ourselves the best that we can, and then pray. Pray for a miracle that forces the ET take stock of themself, gather the strength to face the truth and seek help to turn their life around. Keep reminding yourself you did nothing wrong to deserve the ET’s venom. Forgive the ET, who is undoubtedly hurting even more than you, but don’t forget to take cover. And most important of all, constantly remind yourself that you can survive anything as long as you stick to the truth, never act with malice, and never stop having faith that somehow, somewhere, some time, you’ll finally be free.

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