Category: Daily Life

Yesterday morning I had lots of things to accomplish, but everything I tried to do went horribly, horribly wrong. Here’s a little timeline:

8:15 a.m. – I leave home and head to the post office to drop off 400-odd newsletters. It turns out the Bulk Mail office doesn’t open until 9:00 a.m. Grrr. Luckily it stays open until 8:00 p.m., so at least I can deal with it in the evening.

8:25 a.m. – Since I can’t do the newsletter mailing, I have time to drop off a pan of baked ziti to a friend who is recently home with a new baby. I head in that direction.

8:35 a.m. – I’m almost to my destination when the car completely stalls. The “Achtung” light goes on and I have all battery power, but it can’t turn over. Luckily, I’m in the right-hand lane, so I put on my hazard lights and count on the fact that the car is bright yellow to save me from being hit by other drivers. Did I mention it’s raining? I immediately call my husband, who is still asleep. After I repeat, “This is an emergency! Answer the phone!” about ten times into the answering machine, he manages to scramble to the phone. We briefly discuss what’s going on and he gets off the line to call a tow truck and our mechanic.

8:45 a.m. – I call work to let them know that I’m stranded for an indefinite period of time. I don’t have any meetings, so I figure nobody will really notice anyway, but they are very sympathetic.

9:00 a.m. – An Audi sedan stops and the driver asks me if I need help. The driver has kind of a good ol’ boy vibe, which is a bit incongruous. I tell him, “Thanks, but I have a tow truck on the way.” I appreciate the thought, though.

9:15 a.m. – Most drivers are doing a good job of noticing my flashers and stalled position 1/2 a block from the intersection. Others are frighteningly inattentive. About once every five or ten minutes, a car will race up on me at full speed and brake inches from my bumper, then sit there for a long pause before taking in my “disabled car” status. Many of these drivers are so close to me at this point that they must actually back up to get around me.

9:30 a.m. – I had meant to grab some breakfast after dropping off the ziti, so I’m getting extremely hungry. I call my husband to make sure he’s on his way and, when I discover he has plans to stop by McDonald’s, request the only McDonald’s breakfast food I can stomach: a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. While I’m on the phone, another good Samaritan slows to ask if I need a ride or any help. It’s a woman in a van. I thank her and tell her there’s a tow truck on the way, even though I’m starting to have doubts about it myself.

9:45 a.m. – Traffic has actually picked up, which means more people bearing down on me while distracted by their cell phones, breakfasts or general mental fuzziness. One person has the gall to honk at me. By then my blood sugar is low enough that I don’t care about anything except when my breakfast biscuit is going to arrive. I do start to wonder if my flashers are actually on. Surely people can’t be paying that little attention to their driving? Oh, but they can.

9:48 a.m. – My husband shows up with my breakfast biscuit and – oh joy! – an apple pie. I snarf down all the food and we discuss the car’s problem. He thinks it might be the starter and I agree because it’s been taking a while to turn over lately. We both hope it isn’t the timing belt because we know it’s time to replace the belts on the car and, in fact, have an appointment with our mechanic on Thursday to do just that.

10:05 a.m. – Finally the tow truck arrives. The driver doesn’t know where our mechanic’s shop is, so my husband decides to ride with him and I decide to take the other vehicle and drop off the ziti. I drive the few remaining blocks to my friend’s house. Nobody is there. Sigh.

10:20 a.m. – I return to the scene of the breakdown and the car is on the tow truck’s flatbed. I head to the mechanic’s shop so I can meet them when they arrive.

I’ll drop the timeline, except to point out that I didn’t make it into the office until about 11:30 a.m. Our mechanic’s shop was jammed with cars when we arrived, so we didn’t hear the verdict until about 2:30 p.m. I must have looked like a thundercloud while I was there, because the mechanic called my husband to tell him the news: it was the timing belt. Because of the way my car’s engine is configured, that means that all sixteen valves are bent and the whole engine will need to be rebuilt. At great expense, of course.

The only bright spot is that the person who bought my previous car is picking it up today, so at least we’ll have the money to pay for the repairs. I was feeling morose and broody all afternoon, but after I forced myself to do a mental “count your blessings” list, and then had a chance to visit my friends and hold their adorable new baby, I cheered up and put everything in its proper perspective. My life really is wonderful – sometimes I just get mired in the minor setbacks. Fresh start today, though!

Yesterday started out pretty busy: breakfast, church and an appointment for work. After that my plan was to to go home, eat lunch, do some basement cleaning and run a bunch of laundry loads. Instead, I ate half a sleeve of saltines with fresh peanut butter on them, watched hours of 100 Greatest Standups of All Time on Comedy Central, and dozed off periodically throughout the afternoon. It was great!

By the time my husband finally materialized in the early evening, I had moved my lazy bulk in front of our bedroom TV, the better to nap comfortably when it seemed appropriate. I was surrounded by cats, most of whom were on board with my plan to move as little as possible. Only hunger and a stiff neck could finally compel me to arise and seek a late dinner.

Since it’s nearly impossible to find a real restaurant open after 9 p.m. on Sunday, my husband and I returned home with food from Wendy’s. By the time Deadwood was over, I had already sought out a jar of Maalox tablets and taken four of them to counteract the meal. I knew there was a reason I’d stopped eating fast food.

Since we had our power restored on Friday, I was able to grab the downstairs laptop and look up some information about the historical Calamity Jane and her role in the smallpox epidemic that is clearly about to hit the town in the series. That’s one of the things that makes Deadwood so interesting – a blend of fiction and researchable history (albeit a history that is embellished with many tall tales and thus open to debate).

Today it’s back to work as usual. I have to transcribe three interviews and write a total of five profiles of interviewees from the past couple of weeks. I’ve sold my car, so tonight I need to clean it out and get it ready for the new owner. That laundry I meant to wash yesterday still awaits – and my reputation precedes me on that subject. Enough talk, then. To action!

I left work early yesterday because I have two work assignments to handle over the weekend. After I’d run several errands, I returned home to discover that our electrical problems persisted and that it was apparently up to me to take care of them.

My husband’s electrician friend came by and determined that neither the fuse box nor the breaker box was responsible for the power outage. The problem began outside somewhere. I called the electric company and waded through their voicemail system. Apparently it’s not unusual for someone to lose partial power, because that was one of the options on the automated questionnaire.

The man from the electric company arrived within an hour and quickly discovered that one of the live sections of our aged overhead power line had burned itself in half at both ends. This meant we got a new cable from the utility pole to the house: two black live wires and a shiny silver ground wire. It was an interesting process to watch, especially since the man ended up doing the whole job by himself.

It was dark before he finished, so my husband and I sat on our front porch watching the work. I tried to light some candles to illuminate the porch, but it was too windy. Fortunately I have a battery-powered faux candle, so I brought it out and turned it on until the lights came back.

The man from the utility company told us that the bad wire had probably been causing us problems for some time. It would certainly explain why all our basement lights burned out last week. If we’re lucky, we should have a lot more stable power supply from now on, although we still need to upgrade our breaker box.

So now I’m back online. Hooray! I had some ugly spyware causing problems when I tried to download my e-mail, but I took care of that this morning. The only lingering problem from the whole episode is that one of the cats sneaked out for a while last night, and now she’s darting for the door every time someone tries to leave. Time to get a new squirt gun, I guess.

I didn’t realize how much of an Internet addict I was until I got home yesterday to discover that half of the power was out in our house. Unfortunately, that half included the office where all the network stuff is kept (and my computer, for that matter), so I had to go an entire evening and morning without Web access. As I watched TV last night (the living room power stayed on, thank goodness), I had the urge to Google something. Denied!

Our house was built more than 50 years ago and the electrical system is, to put it charitably, rather cobbled-together. At some point, a previous owner installed a breaker box but failed to upgrade the electrical service coming in. It’s really rather amazing that we manage to run a modern household using our weak and touchy electrical system. I can tell you, we go through a LOT of light bulbs.

This time I believe the problem lies with the ancient fuse box that still lurks in the basement across from the more modern breaker box. It’s filled with old-fashioned “shotgun shell” fuses and the little glass fuses that screw in like light bulbs. It looks as though it should have a sign on it that says, “Touch me, I dare ya!” In fact, I understand that it really IS quite hazardous. The last time one of the fuses went out, I was forced to visit an electricians’ supply store to get a new one. While I was purchasing the new fuse, other customers (professional electricians) came up to me to advise that I not try to install it myself. Luckily my husband has a friend who is an industrial electrician and happens to live just a few blocks away. He’s our go-to guy for scary electrical stuff.

Of course, when I was growing up I used to run down to our root cellar and change fuses all the time. I don’t think it ever occurred to anyone that it might be dangerous. I was more scared of cellar itself than of the fuse box. The cellar was only partially finished with a huge heap of dirt on one side. Worst of all, my dad stored his huge, rusty chainsaw at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t a big stretch to picture Jason shambling out of the shadows.

Still, I’ve decided to let my husband and his friend deal with the power issue while I work happily away where there’s light, Internet access, coffee, etc. If no new columns appear over the weekend, you’ll know why!

It’s only 7:15 a.m., but so far today is all about spending money. And not in a good way.

First I wrote out the two humongous checks to the feds and the state for our income taxes. I followed that with a check to pay off my speeding ticket. I’m late again with the payment to the water softener company, so those phone calls should begin arriving tomorrow.

I have some other bills to pay, but since I pay most of them online they don’t seem as wrenchingly expensive as the ones that go out in the mail as checks. Online bill paying feels more hypothetical somehow, like the story problems in elementary school math class. “Jane has 650 apples and she owes 100 apples each to 7 different creditors. How many apples must she scramble to come up with before her creditors stop by the house with baseball bats in their hands?”

Obviously, today is going to be errand-o-rama. I need to stop by the post office to mail our tax forms because they’re in big, thick envelopes of uncertain weight. After that, I have a jam-packed work schedule that promises to extend well into the evening, thanks to an appointment at 6:00 p.m. that’s a good 20-25 minutes from my house.

Another of my friends had a baby last week and I’ve promised her a dish of baked ziti. I’ll probably gather the ingredients tonight, make it in the morning, and drop it by on my way to work. I’m definitely either going in late or leaving early or both on Friday, since I have at least three hours of work appointments scheduled for Saturday and Sunday combined.

By the way, I’ve added several more blogs to the “Other Blogs I Like” list. Enjoy!

I overslept by an hour this morning, so I’ll have to make this quick.

Yesterday we finally had the plumber out. $110 later, the kitchen drain is, well, draining. I ran the dishwasher and rinsed off the Easter brunch pots and pans. More cleanup will have to wait until tonight.

I finally got finished with a 16-page car club newsletter that has become my bi-monthly albatross. This is definitely the last year I’m going to do it, but I’ll need to soften up the club gently because I know it’ll be difficult for them to get someone else. As of June I’ll be the VP of my community service organization (assuming everyone doesn’t unexpectedly turn on me and write in someone else!), so that’ll really spur some scheduling changes.

Work this week has involved many, many hours of staring at Excel spreadsheets on a computer screen. I’m looking forward to finishing that project so I can go back to copywriting and other eyeball-sparing work. I have to conduct two interviews over the weekend, so at least I’ll be able to leave a little early on Friday.

So off I go to shower, make a protein shake and head to the office. My goal is to try to wring some more presentable fashion out of my wardrobe from now on. I passed up a happy hour with clients yesterday because I was underdressed. I should be able to afford a full-on shopping excursion once tax season is a month or two past. Until then I’ll have to make do with my oversized leftovers from last spring.

Okay, so I don’t really work in a meat locker. However, I am reasonably certain that you could hang a side of beef from the ceiling next to my desk at the office and it would stay fresh for days on end. It’s that cold in our building right now.

Evidently the building custodians decided that it would be a good idea to turn off the boilers and turn on the air conditioning system as soon as the clocks moved ahead. I admit that it was very hot in the office only a week or two ago. However, things have gone too far when everyone in the office has to take frequent breaks to sit on their hands to warm up their fingers. We’ve been going through a lot of coffee, too, but mostly so we can hold the hot cups next to our frozen cheeks and noses to try to encourage some blood circulation to return.

I kept my jacket on all day long today, except when I went to lunch away from the office. Tomorrow I’ve threatened to bring my old, ugly fleece robe that looks like a frayed horse blanket and wear it around the office until I warm up. It won’t make any difference, though. I’ve seen no evidence that the tenants in our 73-year-old office building have any access to thermostats.

I wonder how my co-workers would feel about a chiminea next to my desk?

Let me begin by saying that plumbing is almost a complete mystery to me. I know it can’t be that difficult, but I have a mental block when it comes to the routing of drains and the connectedness of pipes. I actually re-plumbed the guts of my toilet earlier this year, and I was so thrilled at my new domestic goddess-like achievement that I e-mailed all my friends to report what I’d done.

It can’t have been more than a month ago that one of my husband’s friends came over and discovered that our bathroom sink drain was largely dependent on the big plastic bucket we’d put underneath the trap to catch all the water that had been leaking from it. I’d fully intended to look online to see what it might take to re-do the drain…someday. Luckily our friend is a take-charge kind of guy. He returned over the weekend, accompanied me to the hardware store to make sure I got the correct materials, and put in a whole new drain in less than an hour. Lunch was the only payment he would accept.

Today I hosted an Easter brunch for seven people. I made deviled eggs, scrambled eggs, blueberry scones, honey-wheat bread, cheesecake, egg salad, bacon and sausage…a big feast. As is my usual custom, I ran most of the eggshells down the garbage disposal as I peeled the hard-boiled eggs. I probably grind up a dozen eggshells in the garbage disposal every week, along with all manner of vegetable matter, lemon peels, and anything else that seems okay. I don’t grind up potato peels in the garbage disposal anymore (there was an incident – don’t ask), but everything short of watermelon rind usually seems to go down fine. Until today.

As I began rinsing dishes for the post-meal cleanup, I realized that water was backing up into both kitchen sinks. This is very bad. There’s no way I’m going to call a plumber on Sunday, especially since I can’t really afford to have one stop by even during regular business hours. For some reason, I don’t own a plunger. I do own a big bottle of drain opener – I’m pretty sure it’s what caused my bathroom drain to begin to dissolve. Drain cleaner it was, then.

Since then, I’ve been alternating applications of drain cleaner with flushes of water that cause gouts of ground-up eggshell and vegetable fragments to float up the drain and into the sink where I can wipe them out each time the water subsides. I figure if I do this enough times, surely the clog will go away eventually. This is assuming that I’m not in fact resurrecting the last six months’ worth of ill-advised garbage disposal fodder.

So that’s where I stand right now. I can’t run the dishwasher, I can’t wash the pots and pans, and I’m not too sure how I’m going to manage to make dinner. If you happen to drive down the street and see a women washing dishes in her yard with a washtub and a hose, just pretend it’s nothing unusual, for my sake.

After nine years of mowing our enormous lawn with a push mower, I am delighted to report that we’ve turned the job over to a professional. One of our neighbors – who also happens to be a fellow sports car enthusiast – has a lawn care business. He and his daughter mowed our lawn for the first time yesterday, but not without some critiques of its condition.

Because I grew up on a farm, I have no real concept of lawn care. As anyone who grew up in a similar environment can tell you, the “lawn” is the part of the vegetation around the house and outbuildings that you mow regularly. The rest is “pasture.” Weed control, fertilization, seeding, etc., etc., just don’t enter into the equation.

Now that I’m a suburbanite, I’d like to have a yard that at least keeps me from being the disgrace of the neighborhood – I just didn’t know where to start. Now I can remain blissfully ignorant of lawn maintenance details and let someone else take care of it. Hooray!

My one small contribution to the process was in tilling the bare earth portions of the front yard and applying grass seed earlier this week. We had a new driveway and sidewalk put in last summer, but never got around to dealing with the aftermath. Last year, some really awesome succulent weeds of a type I’ve never seen before grew on either side of the driveway in the late summer. We speculate that their seeds were trapped beneath the asphalt until it was torn up to put in the concrete. You see? Nobody who thinks that huge, creeping weeds are cool should be allowed the responsibility of creating a presentable lawn.

I’m sure my niece will be very disappointed when all our “flowers” are gone. Last weekend she carefully picked a big bouquet of dandelions because, she said, “My mommy likes flowers.” Hee! Maybe the time I save not having to pick up sticks and mow will allow me to plant some real flowers for a change. We can only hope.

Good morning, everyone. I’m pausing a moment to check in even though I’m mondo busy today. Last night I didn’t get out of work until after 7 p.m. (they lock my usual exit door sometime before then, I discovered), which meant I missed a board meeting. I was supposed to drop off some forms to the nominating committee chair for another club but I forgot, so now I have to try to do it this morning.

I’m scheduled to interview someone in a few hours, but I haven’t yet developed an outline for the questions. My clothes for today are still in the washer. I only have a 30-minute data card for my tape recorder, and I’m not sure where to go to buy a bigger one. I’m hungry because we didn’t have any food in the house when I got home last night, so all I had for supper was a package of EasyMac and a bag of microwave popcorn. I forgot to stop by the store for frozen fruit, so I’ll be forced to make eggs for breakfast, rather than a more convenient protein shake. Deep breath….

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I foresee things calming down after today. Happy Wednesday to you!