Tuesday, August 11, 2009

the last straw . . .

so today . . . my car has two new dings--all because i can't get rid of anything . . .

i am in the middle of several projects right now--still working on the old sewing room/new office, still cleaning out closets, still anticipating the garage (and not in a good way.) but yesterday i decided to defrost the defective refrigerator/freezer in the garage so we can get it out of there--my first step in cleaning out the garage. so i unplugged it, emptied out the few things i had forgotten were in there (have you ever seen 3 year old string cheese? i wish i hadn't!) and opened the doors to let the ice melt and the water drain out.

my plan was for the water to drain out across the floor between our two cars, and out the front of the garage. that is not exactly what happened. when i got ready to go to lunch today, i saw that for some reason, the water was draining out sideways and heading dangerously close to my stacks of cardboard storage boxes, holding who knows what, but stuff that i thought was important enough to save. so i swooped in to the rescue, mopped up the encroaching water, and laid down a barrier of towels to protect my boxes and their precious contents (whatever those turned out to be . . . ) i checked on the melting process several times today, bailed water from the storage bin a couple of times, and optimistically thought maybe it would all be gone by tomorrow.

the last time i checked it was at about 8:00 p.m. rollie had left about 10 minutes earlier to go play basketball and the air conditioner repairman was just leaving--through the garage. i looked to see how the stream of water was progressing and saw that it was all but dried up. i made a mental note (usually a worthless exercise) to check again before i went to bed.

and then at 9:30, rollie came home. and did not come in the house.

i was in the middle of something, but when he still hadn't appeared 10 minutes later, i went out to see what had sidetracked him in the garage. and there he was, mopping up water.

"what happened?" i asked. he said when he came in the garage the water was soaking into the bottom of my storage boxes, so he was cleaning it up. i immediately ran to get shoes so i could help. because i needed to rescue whatever was in those boxes!!

as i lifted the lid off the box on the bottom of the stack--which had been exposed when rollie moved the other boxes--i found two bitty babies (both dry,) our first video camera that we can't use anymore because someone apparently did something in the menu and now everything is in japanese and we can't read the directions to change it back to english because all the directions are in japanese! i know chinese people who could help if it was in chinese, but it isn't. and diandra's old game boy, which i am sure still works and maybe she will want one day.

relief flooded through me! the only thing i really cared about in that box were the two dolls, and they were fine.

but we still had water to deal with. so i started moving the other boxes to a better location. i couldn't figure out why rollie hadn't stacked them further away when he moved them, and why some of them were on their sides, and most strangely, why he had put the small, pink, hard plastic suitcase filled with something heavy under his car . . . so i asked him, and he said he didn't put it under there well i knew i didn't put it under there, and so i thought he was joking. then suddenly the pieces fell into place, and i knew what had happened. the water had crept over to my cardboard boxes, soaking the one on the bottom, which was probably the only one not packed tightly. the water had weakened the sides of the box, which eventually buckled under the weight of all the other boxes stacked on top of it, and the whole stack toppled over.

rollie immediately started checking his car for dings. i prayed he wouldn't find any, because that small, pink suitcase was heavy. and hard. after careful inspection, no dings were found. i was so thankful that it had just hit the floor of the garage and slid under the edge of his car . . . i mean, i already totaled the back end of it a couple of years ago--i really, really did not want to be responsible for front end dings!

so we started stacking up the boxes on the other side of the garage. and that's when i saw it. whitish dust on the front of my car where there hadn't been any earlier. my heart sank. i went closer to look and found not one, but two dings in my car.

my car is not pristine. it was a couple of years old when i bought it, and so it had some small paint scratches, but no dings. i try to take good care of it and be careful, because i am not getting another car until my joints can't take the pressure of a manual transmission any more.

and now i have two dings--pretty good sized ones--right over the tire on the driver's side of the car. right where i will see them every time i walk into the garage or approach my car from the front. right where you would see them if we retook the picture at the top of my blog--yes, they are that big. and all because i couldn't get rid of the stuff in those boxes . . .

i'm going to bed. i don't want to think about it any more . . .

3 comments:

Diandra Ann said...

you know mom, dings can be fixed... and it cant be that expensive... just a thought :)

Mom said...

At least check out the cost. May be covered by comprehensive, like a rock hitting the windshield...

Jewelielyn said...

oh we'll get it fixed--it's just that it was so preventable. i'm emptying those boxes today--the offending boxes are history . . . mostly :)