Why me?

So here I am, making my dinner, normally enough.  I put the rice on the front burner, I chopped the sausage and celery, and when I was done chopping, I moved the rice to the back burner.  The knob was oddly sticky.  After I got it lit, I tried to turn it down to a low flame to keep the rice simmering, and I had to turn it hard to get it to move, and when I did, it went all the way off.  I turned it back on, and tried to turn it down, and this time I couldn't get it to move at all.  So I got a pair of pliers to turn it, and something went snap.  Now the knob turns but the burner stays full on.  This is not good.

There is a cutoff valve in the wall where the stove plugs in.  I turned off the gas to the whole stove, as that was the only way I could turn off that burner.  But I don't have a working stove.  Admittedly, this stove has been on its last legs for a long time; the oven didn't work when I moved into the house, and two of the four burners have been non-working for years.  But I never use more than two burners at a time, and it did the job for me.  I guess it's time to bite the bullet and get a new stove.

I don't need this, period.  I don't need it all the more when I don't have a paycheck to pay for a new stove with.  But I *especially* don't need it when I don't have enough hours in the three days before I'm supposed to leave on a long trip to get half the things I need to get done before I leave done.

It doesn't especially thrill me that I don't have any real option but to leave on my trip without solving this and have to come home to a house that doesn't have a stove.

The dogs have presented me with not one but two nasty dead possums today.  Why does it seem like they're trying to tell me something about my life?