Signs

When I first moved to Vegas, everything seemed to fall into place pretty effortlessly. I found an apartment within a day, I was working as a caterer by the 3rd or 4th day, and I even had my own personal human GPS (Chef JB) who answered his phone at all hours to give me directions around the city.

A few weeks in, I came home and at the foot of my stairs was a dead, naked, dirty Barbie doll. And an empty grocery cart. The grocery cart moved all around my building for months, parked in one pit of gravel or another - sometimes laying sideways in a bush. The Barbie doll lay prone in the dust for only a few days. She was blonde, like most Barbies, but her hair was all matted and frizzy, not the smooth sheen of Barbie at her best.

I began to wonder if these were signs of impending doom, or possibly good luck charms. I still haven't figured it out, but I do know that squishing a black cricket to death on your bedroom wall is definitely bad luck.