a fib

last week i received a letter from the german employment agency with a mandatory appointment scheduled for tomorrow, the 29th, to discuss the status of my job search. the only problem is: i am currently in pittsburgh, not germany, and i didn’t inform them that i was going to be out of town like i was supposed to (i ran out of agency-allotted vacation days last year, and didn’t think it was likely that they would coincidentally schedule an appointment with me during my short trip here…)

so i devised a lie - a little fib, if you will - to contact the Employment Agency later today, well into the night in germany, about my partner having a medical emergency and wanting to stay home with him until he gets better.

and then, in the early hours of this morning, Ulrich’s a-fib (atrial fibrillation, or abnormal heart beat) started. Ulrich gets them chronically, usually once every few months, but lately it’s become a more common occurrence, with his last episode before this one taking place just a few weeks ago. there is usually not much we can do but wait for it to go away on its own - ulrich usually rests and takes lots of naps - but this time, there is a tiny chirping suspicion tucked into the folds of my mind that i karmically triggered his a-fib through my own fib.

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash