Friday the 13th

I never really knew where the whole Friday the 13th superstition came from. I mean as far as my life has gone, Friday the 13th were more a novelty than any bad omen. So, I decide to do a little research on it and found that in numerology the number 12 symbolizes completeness - 12 months of the year, 12 hours on the clock, 12 Gods of Olympus, 12 Apostles of Jesus, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 signs of the Zodiac. Ergo, if 12 was the number of completeness, 13 was considered irregular for it transgressed this completeness. And Fridays have been considered unlucky days since as early as the 14th century - obviously, Friday was not the end of their work week back then. Accordingly, Friday is an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects. Who knew? Never again will I leave town on a journey on a Friday and certainly not a Friday the 13th. No, I will either have to leave Thursday or wait until Sat.

Superstitions are all quite silly when you really break them down and consider them, and yet we as a society still strongly believe in them. Whether or not you believe in the validity of the Friday the 13th curse or not, you still have to admit that when the very scarce Friday the 13th rolls around you pay a lot more attention to the date than any other Friday in that month. Well, today definitely seemed to be one of those Friday the 13ths when everything just seemed a bit off for me. To start things off I woke up at 9am wide awake even though I didn't have to be to work until 1pm. I laid in bed for awhile hoping I would go back to sleep, but I never did. So, I got up and started to get ready for the day.

It was then that it hit me. Uh oh. My throat is really sore. I drank some water hoping it had just dried out in the night. Thirty minutes and two bottles of water later and my throat was on fire. Oh boy, this is going to be a long night of work. It wasn't until I got in the shower that I realized that in addition to a sore throat, my head was also stuffed up. I took my vitamins and just prayed I would make it through the day before my cold really kicked in. At work I confiscated all of the medic's cough drops to help soothe my burning throat. I also doused myself with an emergency and bottle after bottle of water. So far, no worse.

The work day was going along splendidly enough for a Friday the 13th. No major casualties or catastrophes. Our actress Morgan had 5 of her friends from high school in Atlanta up visiting. They were all working as extras in the scene we were filming with Morgan. She was so excited to have her friends on set that the first thing she said to me was that they were here and I had to come meet them. One by one I greeted each one of them and shook their hand. One of her friends, Sophie, I had met last year when she accompanied Morgan to the premier party. It was nice to share in Morgan's excitement over her friends and it made me forget for a brief time that I was mostly likely coming down with a nasty cold. But then the sky opened up and buckets upon buckets of rain came crashing down all over our scene. Drats! Now what. As I sat inside watching the rain come down and the AD staff furiously try to figure out what to do now, I was reminded of my achy throat. So, I popped another cough drop or two. Eventually, the rain subsided and we finished our scene and moved locations for our night work.

By the time night came, I was convinced I was getting sick and had probably consumed a whole bag of cough drops and nothing else. When we broke for lunch I went and got another bag of cough drops instead of eating. No appetite. Yep, I was definitely sick. By the time we wrapped at 4am, there was no denying that I was sick. I popped one last cough drop for the ride home and realized that my cough drops had little motivational sayings on the wrappers. The first one I had noticed all day. And what did it say? "Don't waste a precious minute." Oh how profound in so many ways. My first thought was to Nolan and how I shouldn't have taken for granted a single moment I had with him. For any future pregnancy I might have, I most definitely won't waste a single moment but will enjoy each and every moment I have with that baby as it may all be over far too quickly. My second thought was how so many minutes of today had been wasted due to the rain or just poor planning. And that would be why we are just now getting off at 4am. But lastly, I remembered it was Friday the 13th and that the day had proved to be somewhat of an off day for me. However, being that it was indeed 4am on Saturday now, Friday the 13th was over. So I rushed home to enjoy as much of the weekend as I could - starting with a nice restful slumber. Maybe tomorrow I will wake up refreshed and no longer sick.