— Oh my goodness, Martha, look! That Kelley Eskridge is back!
— Why so she is, George! She looks a little worn around the edges.
— She looks like she’s been rode hard and put away wet, is how she looks.
— Now George, be nice.
Oh gosh, George, don’t bother, I know how I look. Fucking tired, is how I look.
Here are some stories of my November.
Our car has been leaking oil for a little while. Gosh, I thought, I’ll be responsible about this. Our car is a brilliant little 1992 Toyota which has always taken good care of us, you know? So I took it into the shop. Several hours and a truly vomit-inducing amount of money later, we had a new valve cover gasket, new distributor cap and wires, new rotor, new spark plugs, new front brakes, and a Stern Lecture from the mechanic about the state of the rear brakes and the tires.
I spent the time in the car shop lobby editing client manuscripts and listening to the radio. It was an alt-country station and the song I remember best had the chorus god is great, beer is good, and people are crazy. I heard it at least twice. I was there for a while.
A couple days later, we lost a hubcap. That’s okay, we have a whole set of KMart plastic-but-looks-like-chrome-if-the-car-is-going-fast-enough hubcaps in the attic. One morning I climbed up there, got a hubcap and a retainer ring out of the box, carefully and in an organized fashion put the box away (can you spot my first mistake?), climbed down, went out to the car and commenced to hubcaperate.
The plastic-not-chrome hubcap, being not exactly flexible, cracked.
Back to the attic. Time passes. Cut to: Kelley with new hubcap, hunkered down in the driveway pounding that sucker with a rubber mallet trying to get it to stay on — and the skies opened up. In 10 seconds we went from zero to pounding rain with just enough hail to make it more interesting. I was so wet that I thought, oh well, and just stayed out there until I got the damned thing on.
Two days later I pulled out of our driveway before 7 AM and headed for the gym, thinking What’s that funny noise?
Flat tire.
The one with the new hubcap.
At least it wasn’t raining. Yet. But it looked rainlike, and I’d just learned that particular lesson. So I went home and changed the tire ASAP. Nicola was still sleeping. I changed it very quietly, regarding the donut spare tire with deep suspicion because I always forget how little they are.
I went back to the car shop. Hey, you were just here! they said, and gave me a Stern Lecture about new tires. But they graciously repaired the flat and put it back on. I think they saw the white rings around my eyes at the idea of spending more money.
Two days ago… we lost another hubcap. Now seriously, isn’t this starting to sound like one of those movies where you want to yell at the characters not to do something stupid? Don’t answer the phone! Don’t go into the basement! DON’T TOUCH THAT TIRE!!!
This month, I have also spent at least 24 hours that I can never get back trying to undo the damage caused by Comcast Cable’s “customer service upgrade” to all-digital channels. I have been online with TiVo and on the phone with Comcast (and I know some of you out there share my pain right now). I have installed a digital adapter and re-wired the entire system and hacked TiVo. The net result of all this is that now our TiVo doesn’t work as well (because Comcast isn’t heavily invested in being TiVo-friendly) but at least we can get the fucking SciFi channel again to watch Stargate Universe. I love Robert Carlyle’s work, so right now it’s still marginally a win, but let me just take a moment to give an existential howl: Why does this shit have to change all the time?
This month, someone stole our mail at least once. Although we are in the city, our mailbox is practically in a different zip code (okay, it’s a block and a half away) because there are no sidewalks in our neighborhood and so all the mailboxes in the area huddle together in little clumps here and there, seemingly at random. But since it seems that there is Crime going on in the ‘hood (a number of burglaries recently as well — these things go in spates, and we’re in one right now), all of us in our little mailbox group got together and bought locking mailboxes, and our fabulous neighbors Ron and Kandi installed them for everyone. There was very little hassle for me, thanks to their hard work, but yeesh, what kind of asshole steals the mail?
November is the month when I go to the pharmacy and the prescriptions aren’t ready; when I forget one thing on the grocery list and have to go back; when Nicola’s monitor explodes or one of my programs crashes. When I have to take the screens off the windows and the sun umbrella off the deck, and admit that it’s winter. Bleh. It’s 4:15 and practically dark out, and I will be Very Glad Indeed in four weeks when at least I can tell myself that the days are getting longer again. I pulled a muscle working out and now I can’t go to the gym for a while, and I’m at a delicate black-box stage in my current screenplay story-development, and I am restless.
The interesting thing is that I’ve been oddly cheerful (or at least non-axe-wielding) about most of this. Lots of nice evenings with my sweetie and family and friends. I read the new Stephen King book! (Huge treat for me.) And I’ve been editing my socks off for Sterling Editing. Really enjoying it and, I believe, doing some good. I’m delighted with the response and the work that’s coming in. But you know, it’s a new job and a new business. So right now I’m pretty tired.
Anyway, that’s my month. I was There, but I’m Here now. December is nigh. How are you?
Wow. That’s quite a month you’ve been having.
You are remarkably cheerful about the whole thing. And damn, you do tell a good story. What’s up with those hubcaps? Weird. And I’ll go for the conspiracy theory with the Comcast thing – sometimes it seems like some companies want to force you to use their product (as in ditch TiVo and get their DVR).
I know it’s not true, but right now I feel like I’ve spent my whole month (or is it year) in front of the computer. I turn away from the monitor thinking, I better go grab something to eat and sit outside before dark, and then I realize it’s been dark for an hour or two already. I am not getting used to these short days, but it does make getting up at 5am easier.
Nice to have you back. : )
“Iâm at a delicate black-box stage” What does black-box mean in this instance?
The really weird thing about the hubcaps is I never hear them come off. They’re just… gone.
Black-box means that I am in a part of the process that is not rational and not “force-able.” I have to trust that parts of the story that seem inaccessible to me are actually coming together.
One of the hardest things to explain to newer artists is that things take as long as they take, and that going “faster” is not in and of itself a worthy goal. Sometimes time itself — sitting with the work, letting it find its own breadth and depth — is part of the essential success. But you’re an accomplished artist yourself, so you know that. Impatience is not our friend. But wow, it sure can make a person restless, no?
November was a head-trip. A co-worker slacked and got in trouble and blamed us for it because when Awesome boss asked what was going on, we told the truth. Difficult (read as: personality-disordered) boss got Awesome boss demoted and Rescue is going downhill fast. Difficult boss was immediately overwhelmed and angry co-worker was angry, so they stopped taking the five minutes a shift it takes to accomodate our disability, we made a mistake (that difficult boss has made twice) and caught hell about it, so we turned in our resignation, giving 1.5 months notice to be nice. Difficult boss ignored the notice for four days and then called and said to not bother coming back in. This leaves us with two foster cats and no instructions as difficult boss is no longer speaking to us. The poor dear is going to have to deal with me on Thursday, though, because it’s doggie blood-donation day at the clinic and I’m not going to stop Anastasia donating over the clinic being stupid (Anastasia has type A negative blood, making her a universal doggie donor – rare and in demand) .
Now all this could have been bad, as Medicare refuses to pay for most of my care and I have to shell out $600 a month out of the $800 a month I make on SSDI if I want to be remotely functional. Luckily, my disabled friend’s secretarial aide is going back to college, so that job opened up and I fell right into it. We’ll be making about the same amount a month for slightly fewer hours, with some overtime here and there – a much better deal in the long run. We really do lead a charmed life . . .
The nice thing about all this is that our body and brain have healed enough that we can once again laugh at adversity. We thought we’d lost that ability. It’s nice to have it back.
Our most recent fun-with-tires incident happened when an archaeology workshop classmate picked up a nail. She had no idea how to change a tire and I’m not strong enough to anymore, but I stayed to help her because I can direct just fine. Which was good, because classmate #2 put the first jack in the wrong place but had already removed the tire by the time we saw the mistake. We couldn’t put the car back down, so we had to raid my car for a second jack. Brain damage or no, we were the only party who saw the solution. It’s nice to still be smart once in awhile.
The laugh out of all this was that somehow on her way to the archaeology workshop, the classmate had picked up a nail dating to ca. 1860. Some people will do anything to show off for the teacher :P.
@Zack — Well, yikes. I’m sorry about the Bad and happy about the Good. Sometimes life and the universe are like dominos falling down in a pattern that makes no sense until it gets to the end, and then it makes a pretty picture… I’m very glad that things worked out pretty and hope you’re enjoying the new job!
And yes, it’s very very good to be able to laugh at things. For a while earlier this year I thought I’d lost that, but it turns out it was just off in a corner. It’s nice to have it back.
Glad to see you back and mostly in one piece : ). I highly recommend getting a full-size spare if you can – they work a whole heck of a lot better than the undersized ones.
And Toyotas rule.
@Jo — Thank you, and right back atcha! Bruised but unbowed :).
I love our little Toyota. This is my third one — a ’76 Corolla, an ’83 Corolla and now our ’92 Paseo. My first two cars were manual transmission, which I adored and still miss sometimes.
“This month, someone stole our mail at least once. ”
They were jealous?
http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/epic-fail-stolen-mail-fail.jpg
I had an ’84 Toyota Xtracab truck – manual transmission – that was fabulous. I had to sell it to my dad last year because it started to need more maintenance than I could afford. I still get to drive it occasionally, which is cool. I have an automatic right now. It’s a good car but I miss the power and control you have with a stick.
I’m glad you got your laugh back. Laughter is the best weapon against adversity. Our brain damage got bad in ’97 and left us totally disabled in ’02, so we lost the ability for quite some time. It was quite a relief to get it back.
Glad you survived November. Hopefully December will be better.