For me, the week before Xmas should’ve been dubbed, Days of Murphy’s Law.

Nothing big went wrong. My friends, fam, pets and I were all in fine fettle. None of my precious antiques were stolen or destroyed (mostly because I have none). My Home Town was spared riots, plagues and extra-terrestrial invasion.

What did happen, however, was all sorts of small to medium things got bollixed up. So the impact wasn’t a full-on catastrophe, so much as a cumulative dismantling of my tender psyche. In other words, not a carpet bombing, but that ole Chinese standby — The Death of a Thousand Cuts.

I had almost no chores or obligations the first week. My column deadline was either Thursday morn or afternoon, depending on my lassitude and the lenience of herself, herself, Tori Marbone, Majorette Doma of the Newsroom. After that, my chores were Christmas week: On Wednesday, taking my dogs to their vet appointment in Plattsburgh; and on Thursday handing in my next column.

Everything started to unravel on the first Wednesday eve. I was typing the column on my computer, when with no warning, the screen turned a shrieking monkey-poop green. At first, I was in shock. But while the monitor’s color scheme was bilious, its function was unimpaired. So, merrily I typed along, finished the column and downloaded it onto my thumb drive. And the moment I did, the monitor launched into its death trip. First it hissed … then it fizzled … then it flat-out croaked.

Ultimately, it wasn’t a big deal. I’d finished the column and all I had to do was hand over the thumb drive to Tori Marbone, Major Doma of the Newsroom, the next morning. And that’s exactly what I did. But on my way to shmooze with the other newshounds, I hadn’t taken three steps before she shouted, “Hey, what’s this?”

“What’s what?” I said.

“This,” she said, pointing at her monitor.

I looked and — Lo and Behold! — what WAS that?

For sure, it wasn’t my column. In fact, it wasn’t anything written in English or any other recognizable language. Instead, it was a jumble of numbers, letters and symbols that looked less like a modern language than something you’d find inscribed on the tomb of a Babylonian King.

I’m not computer-challenged, so much as computer-clueless, but even I realized my thumb drive had been corrupted. So, Dope of Action that I am, I immediately tore off to Walgreens, bought another one, flew back and wrote my column.

(A Seide Note: I write all my rough drafts by hand and don’t throw ’em out ’till the final version is in the Enterprise’s clutches. Thus I didn’t have to rewrite my column from scratch, so much as transcribe it, saving me reams of effort and acres of anxiety).

Now, with the column in, all was right with the world. . . at least till Friday morn when I got two surprises.

First, when I turned the key to start my car, there was a slight pause before it fired. A VERY slight pause, But ’twas immediately noticeable to yours truly, who has seen about everything that can go wrong with ancient cara. In this case, I figured the battery was failing. Only one way to find out, which was to have the folks at Advance Auto check it out, which one of them did.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve got good news … and I’ve got bad news.”

“OK,” I said, “what’s the good news?”

“Your battery is fine.”

“And the bad news?”

“Your starter is on the way out.”

Of course I couldn’t drive to P’burgh with an ailing battery, so I canceled the vet appointment. I also couldn’t reschedule it ’till my pals at Evergreen could get a good look at the car, which turned out no earlier than mid-January. But neither hassle weighed on me. First, the dogs’ appointment was only a routine check-up. And second, as for the starter crossing the Rainbow Bridge before its appointment? Listen, some things are best not even thought about, much less put in print, lest they’ll come to pass. ‘Nuff said.

My second surprise was sprung on me Friday afternoon by Tori.

I’d wandered around the ADE, spreading good cheer, bits of wisdom and dead-end cynicism to one and all, and on my way out, passed Tori’s lair.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, trying to look adorably innocent. “I kinda forgot to tell you something.”

“You kinda forgot to tell me something?” I said. “Or you just plain old forgot?”

“Yeah, well, I guess I forgot,” she said.

“And what was it you forgot?” I said.

“To tell you your next week’s deadline is Tuesday, not Thursday,” she said.

“Tuesday?” I said, shocked. “Tuesday?”

“Yeah, cuz of Christmas, ” she said. “We’re off both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so Tuesday’s the latest you can get it in.”

Normally, I have a full week to write my column. Now, I had less than half that.

So what to do?

I’d do what I always do on such occasions — I’d rise to it. Maybe not rise and shine, but at least rise.

Listen, if you’re a deadline writer, you get your stuff done by deadline. It’s your job, you do it and there’s no excuse for NOT doing it.

But suppose you like to write but don’t want a deadline hanging over your precious head? Then what? Then you need to become a poet. First, they don’t have deadlines. Second, thanks to the beauty of free verse and poetic license, your stuff doesn’t need rhyme or rhythm or even an main point. And best of all, you get to emote your stuff at coffee houses, open mics and festivals of the arts, to audiences of your fellow misunderstood aesthetes, who will give you huge rounds of applause and proclaim you the reincarnation of Rod McLuhan.

But not having that option, I got to work.

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Mens rasa

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Probably the only thing more boring than listening to some hack explain how they write would be having to watch them doing it. But, in the name of necessary insight, indulge me, willya.

The actual act of putting my final draft on paper takes around three hours. But it’s the iceberg effect, because it takes me a whole lot longer to think up the column. I mull over it, word-for-word, for several days, before sitting down and handwriting the first draft. This is why, at times, when I’m sitting in Nori’s, staring into the middle distance, apparently just a clueless cluck, I’m actually going over my column in my mind. Of course, at other times when I’m doing that, I AM being a clueless cluck, but give me benefit of the doubt, OK?

So on Saturday and Sunday, I did some serious mulling; then on Monday I wrote the rough draft. All that was left after that was to stroll my bad self into the ADE office, sit at a computer and type it up.

Another explanatory note: I never leave my house in the morn until I’ve had a big glass of juice, three mugs of coffee and something substantial to eat. If I don’t do those things, I’m gonna be calorie-and-caffeine-deprived and setting myself up for a huge afternoon crash. Unfortunately, on Tuesday, that’s exactly what I did.

It was a perfect storm of bungling. Remember I’d bought a new thumb drive? Well, not wanting to lose it, on Thursday eve I put it in a safe place. By Tuesday, I had no idea where in the Lower 48 it was. Yeah, sure, I knew it was in the house, but WHERE in the house was one big question mark. I started my search before I’d had a sip of OJ or java, and before I’d had a crust of bread. And I couldn’t have drunk or eaten anything because my stomach was tied in knots, my pulse was pounding its way out my chest wall and I had the concentration span of a puppy.

I looked high, I looked low, I looked in between. Then I repeated the process, each time as unsuccessful but more frustrating than the last. After I found myself looking in the oven and then in the freezer compartment, I realized the search was fruitless. So I did the only thing I could: I quit looking, grabbed another thumb drive and peeled off to the Enterprise. Once there, I grabbed a spare computer, slapped the rough draft on the desk and started writing.

I hadn’t finished my rough draft — I had about a third to go — but that’s all I need, typically. Unfortunately, this day was anything but typical. With my nerves shot and my blood sugar in the minus column, I was hitting on two cylinders, at best. I did all right when transcribing my rough draft, but with the last third to finish, I was looking at a blank screen with a blank mind. I felt like someone had filled my head with foam insulation and I was wearing welding gloves. Instead of my fingers dancing over the keyboard, they were stumbling like hunting camp drunks.

A nightmare calculus was in effect: The more I wrote, the less productive I became, ’till finally, when I had about two paragraphs to go, I hit the wall. But those are THE most vital paragraphs. They’re the kicker, and because they’re the last thing people read, they should have the strongest, most direct impact.

But these didn’t, and there was nothing I could do about it. Instead, I just sat there, space-shot and slack-jawed, lips moving, with no actual thought behind them, looking like the world’s only surviving brain donor.

Finally, I surrendered, said to hell with it and slammed something that ended the column visually, but not well.

I’ve written around 1,500 columns and never handed in one I thought was poorly written. Some were of course better than others, but I can say I liked all of them — with one noticeable exception. And you know which one that was.

Now a funny thing. I believe I’m a lot more critical about my columns than my readers, which I darn well should be. So while I felt that column was a loser, other peeps said they liked it. Most noticeable among them was my old office mate, and fellow English teacher and trooper in the trenches of academe, Kirk Peterson.

Kirk said how much he liked the column and it brought back fond memories of his teen years. He also said — rather gratuitously, I thought — he’d found a couple mistakes in it.

I was glad to get Kirk’s feedback for two reasons.

One, it was a real ego boost. And two, since his proofreading skills are better than mine, I figure the least he can do from here on out is to become my personal editor.