so today . . . it rained.
i know it rained, because when i pulled out of the 7-11 parking lot this morning, my tires skidded on the wet pavement.
you know that song, "it never rains in california..." well, it is almost true. almost. but not today. today it rained.
rain was in the forecast for tomorrow, but not for today. so when i looked out the kitchen window this morning and noticed that the ground was wet, i thought, "oh wow, it must be getting cooler. the water from the sprinkler hasn't evaporated yet..."
(this is how i know i am turning into a california person. an oregon person wouldn't even notice that the ground was wet! oregon's ground is wet most of the time in the fall! but rain doesn't even enter the mind of a california person--we immediately think "sprinklers!")
i finished gathering up my stuff and went out to the car. i opened the garage door and noticed the driveway was wet too. and getting wetter by the second. and then i saw it. rain.
to be clear, it was california rain--there was water in the air, but it was still safe to wear suede boots. i didn't know how long it was going to stay that way though, so we took the preventative measure of putting electrical tape on those two small cracks that have developed in the roof of my car. thankfully rollie was working from home today and could help me, because since we moved, i'm not sure i could find the electrical tape. i know it is in the garage (which is rollie's territory,) and so i know it has a specific place (like all of rollie's stuff.) i just don't know where that specific place is...
it took a little time to complete the rainproofing of my roof. thankfully i had the time. i have learned that if i set my alarm a little bit earlier and only hit the snooze button once, i have time to make a quick stop at 7-11 and still make it to work on time...
yes, i said on time!! i haven't been late to work once this year! of course, i've only worked seven days, but i think i have turned over a new leaf. apparently being docked 15 minutes of pay isn't enough to get me out of bed earlier, but the promise of a gigantic diet lemon cokesi is! of course, i wish i could survive the day without that infusion of a fizzy, caffeinated drink, but i've been so tired since i went back to work that i've NEEDED it. of course, maybe if i slept a few more minutes in the morning instead of going to 7-11, i wouldn't need it...
but i digress.
i walked in and out of 7-11 without the aid of an umbrella (you see, i am still an oregon person at heart,) but again, to be fair, i did get the parking space right in front of the door. my brain was still not really registering the fact that it was RAINING! how could it be raining?!?! just yesterday i was wearing tank tops and flip flops. i had acquiesced to the cooler temperatures today by donning boots and a sweater, but still... and then my tires squealed out of the 7-11 parking lot...
i was not going terribly fast. however, there were cars approaching me, and they were going terribly fast. so when i hit the gas and felt my tires spin but did not feel my car move, i knew it must be raining. i should have registered "rain" when i had to turn on my lights or use my windshield wipers, but it was early and i was sort of on autopilot (remember, i only hit the snooze button once!) my tires finally gained traction and propelled me toward the first of four stop lights that have become my arch nemeses...
i hate those four stop lights. really. if i could rat them out for their inconsistent and inconsiderate behavior and send them off to traffic light jail, i would. they are never green. never. i always have to wait. and sometimes i have to wait through two or even three rotations at the left turn light. this morning i had time to tweet and post to facebook about my squealing tires before i finally got through that light! (i'm pretty sure it isn't breaking the law to tweet while you are just sitting still at a stupid red left turn light. i think tweeting while sitting at a red light might be the only thing between certain motorists--who shall remain nameless--and road rage...)
i got to school with my diet lemon cokesi (which is no small task, considering that the cup is so big it won't fit in any of my cup holders, so i have to put it in the passenger seat and prop it up with my handbag. which i hate to do, because my handbag is cloth and i'm always afraid that when i turn a corner, my soda will spill on it. or worse yet, completely tip over and spill everywhere! that happened once. it was awful. so to try to prevent that, i put my right hand on the cup to steady it when i go around corners. which wouldn't be a big deal, except my car has a manual transmission which requires me to use that same right hand to shift. it's a good thing i am coordinated...) i knew it was going to be a long day. tonight was open house and i wasn't quite ready. it was also art day. art day on the same day as open house!! what was i thinking?!?!? AND since it was raining, we were going to be stuck in the classroom for recess, which meant energetic kids with nowhere to expend that energy...
i slurped my diet lemon cokesi and hoped for the best...
we got through the morning without any major catastrophes. and then this afternoon i went into the classroom next door to help a teacher who had a screaming, crying three year old who would. not. stop. so i was talking quietly to the child and patting him on the back and just generally trying to get him to calm down and be quiet. because sometimes crying is contagious--especially if you are three and were just awakened from a nap that was not quite long enough! he got a little quieter, but he wouldn't stop crying! and i needed to go back to my own class to finish getting ready for open house! but since i had come in to help, i didn't feel like i could just leave without accomplishing my goal of turning a wailing three year old into a smiling one... so i started talking to the other three year olds sitting at his table having their snack. we were talking about what they were eating, when one precious dumpling looked right at me and said, "i eat boogers!"
okaaayyy... not really information that i wanted to know, but it got the attention of the screaming child, who momentarily stopped screaming to see what was going to happen next...
here's what happened next. "did you see the rain this morning?" i asked.
yep, i deflected and redirected. and it worked. this time. because to a southern california three year old, rain is a BIG deal! he might remember the afternoon it rained last spring, but odds are he doesn't really remember it raining before today. oh, he's heard people talk about it, like they talk about snow and colored leaves falling in october and wide open spaces, but he has had very little, if any, experience with it.
and so, we talked about rain. and the crying child stopped. and the booger-eating child ate his crackers instead. and i managed to escape back to the relative calm of my own classroom...
...just in time for a birthday party. a birthday party in a classroom full of kids who have been inside all day because of the rain. i looked at the clock, breathed a sigh of relief, left my class in the capable hands of others, and headed out into the rain...
...only to be pleasantly surprised by dry ground and sunshine.
yep, it never rains in california... at least not for long :-)
Showing posts with label my car. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my car. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
snug as a bug in a rug :-)
so today . . . my baby is back in the garage! yay!!
no, not diandra! diandra is in oregon helping her best friend get married.
i'm talking about my car.
my car has had a rough few months. it all started at the old house when i noticed the hot water heater was leaking a bit--quite a bit, actually--which meant moving all the (now) wet boxes that i had stacked in front of it to the other side of the garage. where my car was usually parked. which meant that my car had to be moved to the driveway... the cold, dark, wet from the neighbor's sprinkler overspray, driveway...
and then we bought a house, which meant i had to start packing boxes. but the boxes had to be put somewhere, and the house was starting to look like ground zero, so some of the packed boxes joined the previously wet boxes in the other side of the garage... where my car was usually parked. which meant my car had to huddle in the driveway for a little longer...
and then we moved to the new house where we no longer had a three car garage. now we had a cozy two car garage. but here's the thing about two car garages--they are designed to hold two cars. just two. and when you have two cars that you would like to keep in the garage, that doesn't leave a lot of room for washers and dryers. or workbenches and tools. or golf clubs and bowling balls. or a shop vac and a bowflex. and so my car was still camped out on the driveway...
but the lack of space in the new garage was only part of the problem. the other part of the problem was that we didn't get any remotes for the garage door opener. our new garage has a really nice garage door opener, and it works just great... IF you stand in the doorway to the house and press the button. it is quiet. it is fast. it has a laser safety feature. but no remotes. and so the only way to open and close the garage door is by pressing the switch next to the door into the house and then running out of the garage as fast as you can. which is complicated by the laser beam safety. because when you break that laser beam, the door stops. so to get out of the garage, you have to hit the button by the door, run really fast toward the driveway, leap OVER the laser beam (which, btw, you can't see,) and hope you don't smack your head on the descending garage door.
and of course you can't do any of that from inside the car.
so until the problem of the remotes could be fixed, my car still sat in the driveway...
our realtor, jill, assured us that she could take care of this remote problem. we were not going to get any remotes from the sellers. they were not the most cooperative people we have ever encountered. but rollie climbed up on a ladder, wrote down all the necessary numbers from the unit, and jill ordered new remotes from amazon...
problem solved.
maybe in the real world, but in julieland, the problem was NOT solved. the garage door openers from amazon wouldn't work. rollie tried everything! so jill called a garage door opener guy, and he came out, and HE tried everything, and it still wouldn't work.
and my car was still sitting in the driveway, collecting dust and water marks from our sprinkler overspray. i was seriously starting to worry about the paint. watermarks on black shiny paint are not good... not good at all!
and then, while we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, jill had the garage door opener guy come back, and he connected some sort of device to the garage door opener so that it would work with a new set of remotes.
yay! my car was pretty excited. so was rollie. so was i...
... until we got back from vacation, and i opened the garage door only to remember that i had put a bunch of boxes in the garage in order to get the last of the stuff out of the old house. so now even though i had garage door openers that worked, i still couldn't get my car into the garage...
sigh.
i immediately started trying to unpack those boxes to clear out that space. but i kept getting sidetracked. like yesterday. yesterday, i rearranged the kitchen cabinets. yes i said rearranged! i unpacked the kitchen a month ago, but i found a few more kitchen things in the boxes in the garage yesterday. and when i brought them in to find a place for them, i found that there wasn't a place for them. so i rearranged things. in the kitchen. which used up time i could have spent unpacking more boxes...
you see, this is why it is taking me so long to unpack! i want everything to be in the perfect place. but i don't always immediately know where the perfect place is. so even after i have unpacked, i am still moving things around...
but a few days ago, i was alarmed by how terrible my car was looking. i was suddenly worried that maybe the paint was going to be ruined, if i didn't get it in the garage pretty soon. so i stayed up until 3:00 a.m. last night working in the garage. and finally, i had cleared enough space to get my car into the garage!
oh it still isn't perfect. there are a bunch of boxes that are diandra's which need to be moved to her storage unit. there are some boxes that need to go to my school. and rollie hasn't had a chance to put up the shelving yet that is going to hold the bowling balls and golf clubs. so one side of my car is still crowded. but the important thing is that when the sprinklers go off at 5:00 a.m. the water is not going to be hitting my nice, clean, shiny car...
because now my car is nice and shiny and clean. rollie took it to the car wash today. and those water spots? they wouldn't come off. it was pretty bad. but those car wash guys have some tricks up their sleeves, and they somehow used some clay to remove the water deposits from my paint. and now my car is very shiny, and happy, sitting in our new garage.
which is where it is going to stay! because that car wash magic? i'm sure it is cheaper than a new paint job, but maybe not by much...
no, not diandra! diandra is in oregon helping her best friend get married.
i'm talking about my car.
my car has had a rough few months. it all started at the old house when i noticed the hot water heater was leaking a bit--quite a bit, actually--which meant moving all the (now) wet boxes that i had stacked in front of it to the other side of the garage. where my car was usually parked. which meant that my car had to be moved to the driveway... the cold, dark, wet from the neighbor's sprinkler overspray, driveway...
and then we bought a house, which meant i had to start packing boxes. but the boxes had to be put somewhere, and the house was starting to look like ground zero, so some of the packed boxes joined the previously wet boxes in the other side of the garage... where my car was usually parked. which meant my car had to huddle in the driveway for a little longer...
and then we moved to the new house where we no longer had a three car garage. now we had a cozy two car garage. but here's the thing about two car garages--they are designed to hold two cars. just two. and when you have two cars that you would like to keep in the garage, that doesn't leave a lot of room for washers and dryers. or workbenches and tools. or golf clubs and bowling balls. or a shop vac and a bowflex. and so my car was still camped out on the driveway...
but the lack of space in the new garage was only part of the problem. the other part of the problem was that we didn't get any remotes for the garage door opener. our new garage has a really nice garage door opener, and it works just great... IF you stand in the doorway to the house and press the button. it is quiet. it is fast. it has a laser safety feature. but no remotes. and so the only way to open and close the garage door is by pressing the switch next to the door into the house and then running out of the garage as fast as you can. which is complicated by the laser beam safety. because when you break that laser beam, the door stops. so to get out of the garage, you have to hit the button by the door, run really fast toward the driveway, leap OVER the laser beam (which, btw, you can't see,) and hope you don't smack your head on the descending garage door.
and of course you can't do any of that from inside the car.
so until the problem of the remotes could be fixed, my car still sat in the driveway...
our realtor, jill, assured us that she could take care of this remote problem. we were not going to get any remotes from the sellers. they were not the most cooperative people we have ever encountered. but rollie climbed up on a ladder, wrote down all the necessary numbers from the unit, and jill ordered new remotes from amazon...
problem solved.
maybe in the real world, but in julieland, the problem was NOT solved. the garage door openers from amazon wouldn't work. rollie tried everything! so jill called a garage door opener guy, and he came out, and HE tried everything, and it still wouldn't work.
and my car was still sitting in the driveway, collecting dust and water marks from our sprinkler overspray. i was seriously starting to worry about the paint. watermarks on black shiny paint are not good... not good at all!
and then, while we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, jill had the garage door opener guy come back, and he connected some sort of device to the garage door opener so that it would work with a new set of remotes.
yay! my car was pretty excited. so was rollie. so was i...
... until we got back from vacation, and i opened the garage door only to remember that i had put a bunch of boxes in the garage in order to get the last of the stuff out of the old house. so now even though i had garage door openers that worked, i still couldn't get my car into the garage...
sigh.
i immediately started trying to unpack those boxes to clear out that space. but i kept getting sidetracked. like yesterday. yesterday, i rearranged the kitchen cabinets. yes i said rearranged! i unpacked the kitchen a month ago, but i found a few more kitchen things in the boxes in the garage yesterday. and when i brought them in to find a place for them, i found that there wasn't a place for them. so i rearranged things. in the kitchen. which used up time i could have spent unpacking more boxes...
you see, this is why it is taking me so long to unpack! i want everything to be in the perfect place. but i don't always immediately know where the perfect place is. so even after i have unpacked, i am still moving things around...
but a few days ago, i was alarmed by how terrible my car was looking. i was suddenly worried that maybe the paint was going to be ruined, if i didn't get it in the garage pretty soon. so i stayed up until 3:00 a.m. last night working in the garage. and finally, i had cleared enough space to get my car into the garage!
oh it still isn't perfect. there are a bunch of boxes that are diandra's which need to be moved to her storage unit. there are some boxes that need to go to my school. and rollie hasn't had a chance to put up the shelving yet that is going to hold the bowling balls and golf clubs. so one side of my car is still crowded. but the important thing is that when the sprinklers go off at 5:00 a.m. the water is not going to be hitting my nice, clean, shiny car...
because now my car is nice and shiny and clean. rollie took it to the car wash today. and those water spots? they wouldn't come off. it was pretty bad. but those car wash guys have some tricks up their sleeves, and they somehow used some clay to remove the water deposits from my paint. and now my car is very shiny, and happy, sitting in our new garage.
which is where it is going to stay! because that car wash magic? i'm sure it is cheaper than a new paint job, but maybe not by much...
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
my perfect vehicle springs a leak...
so today . . . it rained.
IT RAINED!!! does anyone know that it is already the middle of may?!?!? we should not be having rain. we should be having lovely sunshin-y days, the kind of days that make you want to skip work and lay in the backyard under a tree with a book. that's may! not dashing from the house to the car, juggling bags and drinks and car keys and trying to find an umbrella...
of course if my car was in the garage where it belongs, this wouldn't be such an issue. but right now, my car is living out in the cold.
my car is living out in the cold, because the hot water heater is leaking. it is a small drip, but small drips add up! and since the hot water heater is in the garage, leaking creates issues. you may remember the last time there was water in the garage... my poor car paid the price! so the first thing i did when i noticed the leak was to move my car out of the garage and onto the driveway!
the second thing i did was to move all of the boxes of stuff that had the hot water heater surrounded, out into the main area of the garage to dry out.
and that's about as far as i got. i thought maybe i would just start my sorting and packing and getting rid of stuff with those boxes. but then i got busy... and so the boxes still sit in the garage where my car belongs, while my car languishes in the driveway...
...which might be ok, if we were having our normal weather. but it is RAINING!! which would still be ok, if the roof of my car didn't have a couple of tiny cracks in it.
oh yes, my most perfect car has two small cracks in the top. apparently there are two stress points on my convertible top. they have been reinforced, but i put the top up and down all the time. up and down and up and down. i noticed that it was showing some wear and tear, but i had no idea how bad it was, until a couple of months ago when i was sitting in the car while putting the top up, AND I SAW BLUE SKY THROUGH MY ROOF! it was just a teeny, tiny sliver of sky, but still, it was sky!
after the initial shock, i didn't worry about it too much. it rarely rains here and my car is in the garage most of the time. and then i realized that rain was not my real enemy (well, it might be my enemy, but it never rains in california...) my real enemy was the car wash. and when i realized that i couldn't take my car to the car wash with those two tiny little cracks in the roof, i decided i needed to get it fixed! i sure didn't want to drive around in a dirty car--black cars should be shiny and sleek.
so i called to see how much a new roof would cost. and then i decided i wouldn't be getting a new roof for a while. for quite a while.
my next move was the internet, because you can find a solution for anything on the internet, right? so i started searching for ways to repair a vinyl roof top. and i found some, but they all looked like they had the potential to go disasterously wrong! and it was going to take time, which is something in kind of short supply for me right now. i needed a quick solution, because my car was dirty and scattered rain showers were in the forecast. i thought maybe i could use that wide, clear packing tape short term, but i couldn't get it to stick to the roof! the vinyl on my roof has a pebbled texture, and that clear tape just wouldn't seal.
so i came up with another solution.
duct tape.
yes duct tape. it is strong, it is water resistant, and i already had some in the garage. i am of the opinion that you can fix just about anything with duct tape. so i got out my scissors and my roll of duct tape and headed for my car...
it was a pretty simple process to cut a piece of duct tape and cover the cracks in my roof. but as i surveyed my handiwork, i was not satisfied. my roof is black and the duct tape is silver. normally i like things that are silver, but this just looked tacky, tacky, tacky. this was not a perfect soution. i needed something else... something black... something like a black permanent marker...
did you know that if you want to color a piece of silver duct tape black, you have to move your black permanent marker slowly? because if you don't, it leaves little silver tracks...
well, it wasn't a perfect solution, but i thought at least it would keep the water out until i could decide what to do. it rained a little bit, and my car stayed dry inside, so i thought maybe this was going to work!
and then we had a sunny day. and another sunny day. and a hot sunny day. and then a whole week of hot sunny days. and that is when i learned that duct tape adhesive sort of melts in the heat, because it wasn't long before my customized duct tape had loosened enough to blow off my roof. so now, not only was my roof back to being at the mercy of any passing water, but as a bonus, there were big white rectangles of leftover duct tape adhesive on my roof!
i tried to get it off, but it was soooo sticky! and it had melted down into the spaces between the pebbled texture of the vinyl--not enough to seal the cracks of course, just enough to make a big ugly mess.
i gave up. it hardly ever rains anyway, and i decided i would just have to drive around with a dirty car until i could save up $2,500 for a new roof!!!
and then, a couple of weeks ago while i was at school, rollie somehow miraculously removed all that icky adhesive, washed the car, and temporarily repaired the cracks. with electrical tape. black electrical tape. black electrical tape that also eventually fell off the roof, but at least any adhesive residue is black. it was a brilliant solution.
so my car is once again waterproof. i hope. because while the rain is supposed to end today, i am thinking my baby needs a bath!
Monday, October 4, 2010
if i'm tired, it must be monday...
so today . . . was monday. i hate mondays...
the problem is, i am usually more tired on monday morning than any other day of the week. and this is just wrong! you would think that after having the weekend off, i would feel at least a little bit more rested monday morning than i did friday afternoon. but i don't.
the problem is, my weekends...
i do not have lazy, relaxed weekends. my weekends are busy--spending time with my family, catching up on household stuff, watching the shows i tivoed (is that even a word?!?!) during the week. it seems like there is very little "down" time.
but this last weekend was worse than usual. i had plans to attend the women's retreat for our church. this meant i had to hit the road as soon as i got out of school at noon, if i was going to beat the traffic. which i did.
the word "retreat" sounds restful, but our ladies' retreat weekend never quite seems to achieve that. if i just went, "retreated," and came home, it might be fine. but that isn't what i do...
i left shortly after noon, drove for about an hour, and then planned to stop and eat. every year, i plan to stop and eat after driving for an hour. and every year i miss the exits with food and end up eating a chili dog at the tiny dairy queen at the outlet mall.
but not this year. this year, after i whizzed past the exit i wanted, i decided i would just get off at the next exit and turn around. which i did. and found myself smack dab in the middle of nirvana--a brand new mega towne center!
i was just going to eat lunch and read my book, but before i could find a place with food, i found ulta. and target. and ross. (it is worth mentioning that we have all of these stores within about three miles from our house, so it isn't like these are my favorite stores that i never have the chance to go to. but there is just something about going to familiar stores in a different city...) i finally forced my debit card back into my wallet and went in search of food. i found a chick-fil-a, ordered a kid's meal, and settled in with my book.
the next thing i knew, it was raining.
i had seen the clouds gathering, but it has been so long since i have been in the rain, that i didn't even think about that as a possibility! we have clouds occasionally, but they rarely drop rain on us. it is such an unusual occurrence, that i could have just sat there by the big windows and enjoyed the show... except it was raining on my car... the one i had just taken to the car wash the day before... my nice clean black car...
when your car is black, you look at rain in a whole new way. and wind. and trees. and leaf blowers. they all become the enemy. i knew my car would get dusty on this trip, but rain was nowhere on my radar. i just sat there, helplessly, as my nice clean car got covered in water. and thought about what to do...
i quickly ruled out sneaking paper towels from the bathroom to dry it off. my car is small, but it was very wet! i was pretty sure i could not hide enough paper towels on my person to adequately dry my car. (i know, it is a little unnerving that the thought would even enter my mind!) i thought about driving back to the bed, bath, and beyond store that was just between target and ulta, and buying a big bath towel to soak up all that water. but i was pretty sure that while it might soak up the water, a new towel would probably also leave lint all over it's shiny black surface. i finally settled on target--surely they would carry that sham-wow i keep hearing about...
surely they didn't. but they did have other specially designed car drying towels. i didn't already have a specially designed car drying towel, so i chose one and headed to the cash registers.
by now the sun was shining. the water was starting to dry and leave spots on my car. i needed to put that new drying towel to use fast! but there were so many people in the parking lot... so i drove to the "outskirts" of the parking lot, got out, and started drying off my car--only to realize that what i thought was the outskirts was actually quite near an intersection. i am sure the people who live there were busy tweeting, "there is a crazy woman in the target parking lot drying off her car!!!"
when my car was dry and shiny once again, i continued on down the freeway to the retreat center. and the weekend progressed from there. i ate. i listened to a really good speaker. i napped. i went in search of a soda (and also found chocolate cake!) i ate and listened some more. and on saturday night i headed home.
sunday was as busy as usual, with the addition of unpacking to do. then there were lesson plans to finish up, and facebook games to check in on, and blogs to read...
and then it was monday morning. again. now i have a whole week to recuperate before facing another weekend...
the problem is, i am usually more tired on monday morning than any other day of the week. and this is just wrong! you would think that after having the weekend off, i would feel at least a little bit more rested monday morning than i did friday afternoon. but i don't.
the problem is, my weekends...
i do not have lazy, relaxed weekends. my weekends are busy--spending time with my family, catching up on household stuff, watching the shows i tivoed (is that even a word?!?!) during the week. it seems like there is very little "down" time.
but this last weekend was worse than usual. i had plans to attend the women's retreat for our church. this meant i had to hit the road as soon as i got out of school at noon, if i was going to beat the traffic. which i did.
the word "retreat" sounds restful, but our ladies' retreat weekend never quite seems to achieve that. if i just went, "retreated," and came home, it might be fine. but that isn't what i do...
i left shortly after noon, drove for about an hour, and then planned to stop and eat. every year, i plan to stop and eat after driving for an hour. and every year i miss the exits with food and end up eating a chili dog at the tiny dairy queen at the outlet mall.
but not this year. this year, after i whizzed past the exit i wanted, i decided i would just get off at the next exit and turn around. which i did. and found myself smack dab in the middle of nirvana--a brand new mega towne center!
i was just going to eat lunch and read my book, but before i could find a place with food, i found ulta. and target. and ross. (it is worth mentioning that we have all of these stores within about three miles from our house, so it isn't like these are my favorite stores that i never have the chance to go to. but there is just something about going to familiar stores in a different city...) i finally forced my debit card back into my wallet and went in search of food. i found a chick-fil-a, ordered a kid's meal, and settled in with my book.
the next thing i knew, it was raining.
i had seen the clouds gathering, but it has been so long since i have been in the rain, that i didn't even think about that as a possibility! we have clouds occasionally, but they rarely drop rain on us. it is such an unusual occurrence, that i could have just sat there by the big windows and enjoyed the show... except it was raining on my car... the one i had just taken to the car wash the day before... my nice clean black car...
when your car is black, you look at rain in a whole new way. and wind. and trees. and leaf blowers. they all become the enemy. i knew my car would get dusty on this trip, but rain was nowhere on my radar. i just sat there, helplessly, as my nice clean car got covered in water. and thought about what to do...
i quickly ruled out sneaking paper towels from the bathroom to dry it off. my car is small, but it was very wet! i was pretty sure i could not hide enough paper towels on my person to adequately dry my car. (i know, it is a little unnerving that the thought would even enter my mind!) i thought about driving back to the bed, bath, and beyond store that was just between target and ulta, and buying a big bath towel to soak up all that water. but i was pretty sure that while it might soak up the water, a new towel would probably also leave lint all over it's shiny black surface. i finally settled on target--surely they would carry that sham-wow i keep hearing about...
surely they didn't. but they did have other specially designed car drying towels. i didn't already have a specially designed car drying towel, so i chose one and headed to the cash registers.
by now the sun was shining. the water was starting to dry and leave spots on my car. i needed to put that new drying towel to use fast! but there were so many people in the parking lot... so i drove to the "outskirts" of the parking lot, got out, and started drying off my car--only to realize that what i thought was the outskirts was actually quite near an intersection. i am sure the people who live there were busy tweeting, "there is a crazy woman in the target parking lot drying off her car!!!"
when my car was dry and shiny once again, i continued on down the freeway to the retreat center. and the weekend progressed from there. i ate. i listened to a really good speaker. i napped. i went in search of a soda (and also found chocolate cake!) i ate and listened some more. and on saturday night i headed home.
sunday was as busy as usual, with the addition of unpacking to do. then there were lesson plans to finish up, and facebook games to check in on, and blogs to read...
and then it was monday morning. again. now i have a whole week to recuperate before facing another weekend...
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
storm watch. 2010. day 3.
so today . . . at 3:45 p.m. the rain ceased to be entertaining.
the day once again started out dry. i even checked with rollie about the forecast, because while my phone said it would only get up to 58 degrees today, it said nothing about rain. he assured me that the rain was coming . . .
i've come to hate the look of a cloudy, gray sky. and my closet full of dry weather clothes.
when i am at school, i am oblivious to the weather. my classroom is in the basement with narrow windows at ceiling height, and all we can see is the top of the building next door. we have heat and air conditioning and nice bright lights, so our temperature and visibility are unaffected by the weather. until we go up to the gym for recess, we have no idea of what is going on outside. which usually doesn't matter, because usually the sun is shining! but today when we went upstairs for playtime in the gym, i noticed that although the sky was cloudy and gray, there was still no rain.
so on my 15 minute break, i made an uneventful (this time) dash to 7-11 for emergency supplies (you know what i am talking about!) i noticed that one part of the sky was significantly darker than the rest. oh good, i thought to myself, maybe the storm is going past us today. yeah, well, i believed that little fairy tale until i realized that the dark part of the sky was to the west of us, and that crazy jet stream is traveling east.
now that i had supplies, i was able to stay inside during my lunch break. my plan had been a nice lunch with my book at chick-fil-a, since i had a whole hour today. but after seeing that sky, i could just imagine myself having to dash back to my car in the flooded parking lot with pouring rain drenching me and then spending the rest of the afternoon cold and wet. no thank you!
i fully expected the rain to be over by the time i left for home. that is what happened on monday. that is what happened yesterday. and our weather is nothing if not predictable. in fact, we rarely see the rain, because it almost always rains at night here. i don't know why, it just does . . .
so i put on my coat, picked up my handbag and computer bag and umbrella, and headed for the door. i could see that it was raining, so i adjusted my bags so that they were both on my shoulder and would be protected under the umbrella. i put my hood up. (don't ask why, i have no idea. i had an umbrella, but it just seemed like the thing to do.) i pushed open the door and started up the outside stairs. when i got to the top of the stairs, i stopped. i couldn't believe my eyes. the wind was blowing, and rain was coming down in sheets! you could see walls of it moving across the parking lot. this was more rain than i had seen since the day it rained something like 15 inches in one day when we lived at the coast. and that was ten years ago!!
i stood there for a few minutes trying to decide what to do. then i realized that even though i was kind of protected by the building, i was still getting wet! ok, make a dash for it, i thought. so i did--over the flooded grass and through the really flooded parking lot. i decided against opening the trunk in favor of trying to stuff my bags into the car, over the driver's seat, and into the passenger seat--yeah, that is why i usually use the trunk! i opened the door ready to fling my bags in . . . and discovered a major design flaw with my perfect little roadster--when sheets of rain are blowing across the roof and you open the door, the water falls in a stream straight down into the driver's seat! uh huh . . .
i didn't know what to do. i just stood there and watched my bucket seat fill up with rain water. should i put my bags in? but i would have to put them in the wet driver's seat first before i could bend down and lift them over the emergency brake into the other seat. and i couldn't bend down, because i was holding my umbrella (for all the good THAT was doing) and it was stuck between the roof of the car and the car door. should i just get in and try to pull them in after me? sit in that puddle?!?!?! are you kidding me?!?! maybe i should just open the trunk after all. but then all my eco-friendly cloth shopping bags would get wet. oh, and btw, THE PUDDLE IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT WAS NOT GETTING ANY SMALLER! i needed to do something!!
so i slammed the door closed and ran back into the school building.
you might think this was counterproductive. after all, i was already at the car. i was already about as wet as i could get. and now i had just doubled the amount of times i was going to have to slosh across the flooded parking lot. and maybe you would be right. but all i could think was my car is filling up with water and i don't know how to make it stop!!
so it was time to regroup. i needed a plan b. first things first--i walked down the hall and told ms. martha what had happened. i needed some sympathy and understanding, and i needed it fast! and then i started looking for the paper towels. because i figured that with all the rain around our school in the basement, real, dry, cotton towels were going to be scarce. but it was my lucky day (really?!?!?) because one was located.
ok, both bags on my shoulder, hood up, soda dumped (oh yes, i forgot to mention that i also had a soda in my hand before . . . ) umbrella in position, and towel in hand. i was ready to give it another try.
i went out the door and up the stairs. i peeked out into the parking lot. ok, good. the rain seemed to have slowed just a bit, and the wind had died down, so at least the rain was vertical now instead of horizontal. my feet and pants were already wet, so i took the shortest route to my car, even though i didn't have my water wings handy. i opened the car door, and without the wind blowing the water across my roof, the rain followed the little gutter around the door and down the side. yes!! ok, now just maneuver the bags in, and . . . then the wind blew, gustily!! the water coursed across the roof and down into the seat, and right INTO my handbag and computer bag!! i frantically tried to fling them across into the other seat, but the handles caught on the emergency brake. i couldn't reach far enough in to free them without letting go of the umbrella. and if i let go of the umbrella it would blow away. and, oh yeah, now there was more water in the driver's seat!! AAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!
i collapsed the umbrella, threw it onto the floor, put the towel in the driver's seat, threw myself into the car, and slammed the door shut! and the rain continued!
ok, well at least i was in the car. i was soaked, as was my seat, my carpet, and both the inside and outside of my bags, but we were all safe now. i hoped. all i had to do was get home and into the garage.
i started home, and knew i was in trouble when i saw the cars coming toward me on the road. great fountains of water were spraying high into the air. that is fine if you are driving an suv (rollie) or a jeep (diandra) but if you are driving a mazda mx-5 . . .
great! i survived the sinus rinsing only to drown on my way home from work . . .
i only live a mile from school, and i did not know if i was going to make it home. there was water across the road, but there was no where else to go. so i pretended my car was chitty chitty bang bang and plowed on through. i was afraid that if i stopped, my car might stall. (of course, i have no idea how a car works, so i don't know if that was a real danger or not.) i was trying to figure out how deep the water was, when i saw some high school kids running across the street. and the water was almost up to their knees! i turned into our neighborhood and couldn't see the road. it was completely flooded. the water was up over the sidewalks. i aimed my little car for the center of the road and tried to make it home without hydroplaning. i wasn't completely sure that my car was going to respond when i slowed down to turn into our driveway. but it did. and i coasted into lovely dryness.
i'm thinking maybe i should spend day 4 of storm watch 2010 in bed. warm and dry. with a book . . .
the day once again started out dry. i even checked with rollie about the forecast, because while my phone said it would only get up to 58 degrees today, it said nothing about rain. he assured me that the rain was coming . . .
i've come to hate the look of a cloudy, gray sky. and my closet full of dry weather clothes.
when i am at school, i am oblivious to the weather. my classroom is in the basement with narrow windows at ceiling height, and all we can see is the top of the building next door. we have heat and air conditioning and nice bright lights, so our temperature and visibility are unaffected by the weather. until we go up to the gym for recess, we have no idea of what is going on outside. which usually doesn't matter, because usually the sun is shining! but today when we went upstairs for playtime in the gym, i noticed that although the sky was cloudy and gray, there was still no rain.
so on my 15 minute break, i made an uneventful (this time) dash to 7-11 for emergency supplies (you know what i am talking about!) i noticed that one part of the sky was significantly darker than the rest. oh good, i thought to myself, maybe the storm is going past us today. yeah, well, i believed that little fairy tale until i realized that the dark part of the sky was to the west of us, and that crazy jet stream is traveling east.
now that i had supplies, i was able to stay inside during my lunch break. my plan had been a nice lunch with my book at chick-fil-a, since i had a whole hour today. but after seeing that sky, i could just imagine myself having to dash back to my car in the flooded parking lot with pouring rain drenching me and then spending the rest of the afternoon cold and wet. no thank you!
i fully expected the rain to be over by the time i left for home. that is what happened on monday. that is what happened yesterday. and our weather is nothing if not predictable. in fact, we rarely see the rain, because it almost always rains at night here. i don't know why, it just does . . .
so i put on my coat, picked up my handbag and computer bag and umbrella, and headed for the door. i could see that it was raining, so i adjusted my bags so that they were both on my shoulder and would be protected under the umbrella. i put my hood up. (don't ask why, i have no idea. i had an umbrella, but it just seemed like the thing to do.) i pushed open the door and started up the outside stairs. when i got to the top of the stairs, i stopped. i couldn't believe my eyes. the wind was blowing, and rain was coming down in sheets! you could see walls of it moving across the parking lot. this was more rain than i had seen since the day it rained something like 15 inches in one day when we lived at the coast. and that was ten years ago!!
i stood there for a few minutes trying to decide what to do. then i realized that even though i was kind of protected by the building, i was still getting wet! ok, make a dash for it, i thought. so i did--over the flooded grass and through the really flooded parking lot. i decided against opening the trunk in favor of trying to stuff my bags into the car, over the driver's seat, and into the passenger seat--yeah, that is why i usually use the trunk! i opened the door ready to fling my bags in . . . and discovered a major design flaw with my perfect little roadster--when sheets of rain are blowing across the roof and you open the door, the water falls in a stream straight down into the driver's seat! uh huh . . .
i didn't know what to do. i just stood there and watched my bucket seat fill up with rain water. should i put my bags in? but i would have to put them in the wet driver's seat first before i could bend down and lift them over the emergency brake into the other seat. and i couldn't bend down, because i was holding my umbrella (for all the good THAT was doing) and it was stuck between the roof of the car and the car door. should i just get in and try to pull them in after me? sit in that puddle?!?!?! are you kidding me?!?! maybe i should just open the trunk after all. but then all my eco-friendly cloth shopping bags would get wet. oh, and btw, THE PUDDLE IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT WAS NOT GETTING ANY SMALLER! i needed to do something!!
so i slammed the door closed and ran back into the school building.
you might think this was counterproductive. after all, i was already at the car. i was already about as wet as i could get. and now i had just doubled the amount of times i was going to have to slosh across the flooded parking lot. and maybe you would be right. but all i could think was my car is filling up with water and i don't know how to make it stop!!
so it was time to regroup. i needed a plan b. first things first--i walked down the hall and told ms. martha what had happened. i needed some sympathy and understanding, and i needed it fast! and then i started looking for the paper towels. because i figured that with all the rain around our school in the basement, real, dry, cotton towels were going to be scarce. but it was my lucky day (really?!?!?) because one was located.
ok, both bags on my shoulder, hood up, soda dumped (oh yes, i forgot to mention that i also had a soda in my hand before . . . ) umbrella in position, and towel in hand. i was ready to give it another try.
i went out the door and up the stairs. i peeked out into the parking lot. ok, good. the rain seemed to have slowed just a bit, and the wind had died down, so at least the rain was vertical now instead of horizontal. my feet and pants were already wet, so i took the shortest route to my car, even though i didn't have my water wings handy. i opened the car door, and without the wind blowing the water across my roof, the rain followed the little gutter around the door and down the side. yes!! ok, now just maneuver the bags in, and . . . then the wind blew, gustily!! the water coursed across the roof and down into the seat, and right INTO my handbag and computer bag!! i frantically tried to fling them across into the other seat, but the handles caught on the emergency brake. i couldn't reach far enough in to free them without letting go of the umbrella. and if i let go of the umbrella it would blow away. and, oh yeah, now there was more water in the driver's seat!! AAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!
i collapsed the umbrella, threw it onto the floor, put the towel in the driver's seat, threw myself into the car, and slammed the door shut! and the rain continued!
ok, well at least i was in the car. i was soaked, as was my seat, my carpet, and both the inside and outside of my bags, but we were all safe now. i hoped. all i had to do was get home and into the garage.
i started home, and knew i was in trouble when i saw the cars coming toward me on the road. great fountains of water were spraying high into the air. that is fine if you are driving an suv (rollie) or a jeep (diandra) but if you are driving a mazda mx-5 . . .
great! i survived the sinus rinsing only to drown on my way home from work . . .
i only live a mile from school, and i did not know if i was going to make it home. there was water across the road, but there was no where else to go. so i pretended my car was chitty chitty bang bang and plowed on through. i was afraid that if i stopped, my car might stall. (of course, i have no idea how a car works, so i don't know if that was a real danger or not.) i was trying to figure out how deep the water was, when i saw some high school kids running across the street. and the water was almost up to their knees! i turned into our neighborhood and couldn't see the road. it was completely flooded. the water was up over the sidewalks. i aimed my little car for the center of the road and tried to make it home without hydroplaning. i wasn't completely sure that my car was going to respond when i slowed down to turn into our driveway. but it did. and i coasted into lovely dryness.
i'm thinking maybe i should spend day 4 of storm watch 2010 in bed. warm and dry. with a book . . .
Monday, September 28, 2009
a series of unfortunate events, even though i'm not lemony snickett
so today . . . i ate dinner at the laundromat. or is it laundrymat. or laundramat. maybe i'll just use one of the few spanish words i know, since they seem to be the only ones with a consistent spelling for the place where you go to pay a lot of money to wash your clothes all at once in machines where hundreds of other people also wash their clothes . . . and say i ate dinner at the lavenderia . . .
"why?" you ask? well the short answer is because my washing machine isn't working properly. but you don't come here for the short answers, so let's go back to last friday . . .
fridays are typically my favorite day of the week, even though i have to work half a day. but that is also part of the reason why i like fridays--i only have to work half a day! which gives me half a day off, which is not enough time to tackle any big jobs . . . so fridays are my day to play. usually rollie and i go to the movies (at the cheap theater, because i must have a soda--which costs $4! so if my movie ticket is only $2, then i feel like we get our money's worth. whereas, if we have to pay $10 for each ticket . . . i'm sorry, but no.)
last friday when i got off work we went to lunch and then took my car in for an oil change. (i tell you this, because it was the beginning of a series of unfortunate events.) i had a coupon! so i drove into mazda, and the guy immediately came out to help me--we get the best service there! i told him i needed the oil changed, he said ok, and then walked around the car checking it out. and saw the dents.
remember the dents in my previously perfect front "fender?" yeah, i try to forget about it too. so when he said, "whoa, something fall on your car?" it wasn't really a conversation i wanted to have. he finished his inspection, and we went in to do the paperwork. he checked his computer and found that it was also time to have my tires rotated. ok. i know that maintenance is important in keeping my high performance vehicle performing highly, so i said go ahead and do it. of course, i do not have a coupon for this . . .
we headed home and watched the season premieres of our favorite tv shows with diandra instead of going to the movies. she had a rare afternoon home, and it was too hot to go do anything, so we hunkered down in the air conditioning to see who survived survivor this week . . .
a few hours later, diandra and her jeep went off to spend quality time together. two minutes later rollie got a text message--"i noticed there is water running out of the garage down the driveway. you might want to check it out . . . " um, yeah--water running out of the garage is usually not a good thing. i opened the garage door, and heard the water running. i hurried over to the washing machine, thinking that maybe the drainage hose had worked it's way loose. but what i saw was water pouring out over the top of the machine. it just kept filling and filling and filling . . .
an hour later (after taking care of that mess,) i answered my phone only to hear my friend at mazda tell me that my car also needed an air filter. ok. i know it needs clean, fresh air to breathe, so go ahead and do it. i do not have a coupon for this either.
my friday is going rapidly downhill. i turn to my computer and the internet for refuge. i start catching up on my blog reading, and guess what? the evil killer virus attacks me. AGAIN!! i cannot believe it! but i learned some things from last time, so i handle it differently to minimize the damage and think maybe it would be a good idea to take a picture of all the messages it is sending me. i grab my camera and turn it on. and nothing happens. shoot! it must need batteries, so i replace the batteries, race back to my computer screen (which is now the blue screen of death,) turn the camera on, and . . . nothing. AAGGHHHH!! ok, those "new" batteries must have somehow become mixed up with old ones. i quickly run to rollie's stash of rechargeable batteries and insert those and turn the camera on again. still nothing.
my camera is history. toast. dead.
and the evil killer virus is still attacking my computer. i can't call james, because by then it was 11:00 at night. so i did the only thing i could think of. i turned it off. well, after i raced upstairs, babbled to diandra to come downstairs RIGHT NOW with her camera, because i needed her to take some pictures. at 11:00 at night. when everyone else is in bed, and i am clearly not looking my best--of course, because MY COMPUTER IS UNDER ATTACK!!!
it turned out to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day . . .
saturday, i didn't want to get out of bed.
but i did. i texted james my tale of woe, and he assured me he could take care of my computer. i called a repair service to come and look at my washer. they said they would be glad to help me.
next friday.
which is why i was eating dinner at the lavenderia tonight. subway sandwiches and barbeque potato chips and diet coke. and rollie (without whom, there would have been no dinner at the lavenderia tonight.)
"why?" you ask? well the short answer is because my washing machine isn't working properly. but you don't come here for the short answers, so let's go back to last friday . . .
fridays are typically my favorite day of the week, even though i have to work half a day. but that is also part of the reason why i like fridays--i only have to work half a day! which gives me half a day off, which is not enough time to tackle any big jobs . . . so fridays are my day to play. usually rollie and i go to the movies (at the cheap theater, because i must have a soda--which costs $4! so if my movie ticket is only $2, then i feel like we get our money's worth. whereas, if we have to pay $10 for each ticket . . . i'm sorry, but no.)
last friday when i got off work we went to lunch and then took my car in for an oil change. (i tell you this, because it was the beginning of a series of unfortunate events.) i had a coupon! so i drove into mazda, and the guy immediately came out to help me--we get the best service there! i told him i needed the oil changed, he said ok, and then walked around the car checking it out. and saw the dents.
remember the dents in my previously perfect front "fender?" yeah, i try to forget about it too. so when he said, "whoa, something fall on your car?" it wasn't really a conversation i wanted to have. he finished his inspection, and we went in to do the paperwork. he checked his computer and found that it was also time to have my tires rotated. ok. i know that maintenance is important in keeping my high performance vehicle performing highly, so i said go ahead and do it. of course, i do not have a coupon for this . . .
we headed home and watched the season premieres of our favorite tv shows with diandra instead of going to the movies. she had a rare afternoon home, and it was too hot to go do anything, so we hunkered down in the air conditioning to see who survived survivor this week . . .
a few hours later, diandra and her jeep went off to spend quality time together. two minutes later rollie got a text message--"i noticed there is water running out of the garage down the driveway. you might want to check it out . . . " um, yeah--water running out of the garage is usually not a good thing. i opened the garage door, and heard the water running. i hurried over to the washing machine, thinking that maybe the drainage hose had worked it's way loose. but what i saw was water pouring out over the top of the machine. it just kept filling and filling and filling . . .
an hour later (after taking care of that mess,) i answered my phone only to hear my friend at mazda tell me that my car also needed an air filter. ok. i know it needs clean, fresh air to breathe, so go ahead and do it. i do not have a coupon for this either.
my friday is going rapidly downhill. i turn to my computer and the internet for refuge. i start catching up on my blog reading, and guess what? the evil killer virus attacks me. AGAIN!! i cannot believe it! but i learned some things from last time, so i handle it differently to minimize the damage and think maybe it would be a good idea to take a picture of all the messages it is sending me. i grab my camera and turn it on. and nothing happens. shoot! it must need batteries, so i replace the batteries, race back to my computer screen (which is now the blue screen of death,) turn the camera on, and . . . nothing. AAGGHHHH!! ok, those "new" batteries must have somehow become mixed up with old ones. i quickly run to rollie's stash of rechargeable batteries and insert those and turn the camera on again. still nothing.
my camera is history. toast. dead.
and the evil killer virus is still attacking my computer. i can't call james, because by then it was 11:00 at night. so i did the only thing i could think of. i turned it off. well, after i raced upstairs, babbled to diandra to come downstairs RIGHT NOW with her camera, because i needed her to take some pictures. at 11:00 at night. when everyone else is in bed, and i am clearly not looking my best--of course, because MY COMPUTER IS UNDER ATTACK!!!
it turned out to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day . . .
saturday, i didn't want to get out of bed.
but i did. i texted james my tale of woe, and he assured me he could take care of my computer. i called a repair service to come and look at my washer. they said they would be glad to help me.
next friday.
which is why i was eating dinner at the lavenderia tonight. subway sandwiches and barbeque potato chips and diet coke. and rollie (without whom, there would have been no dinner at the lavenderia tonight.)
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 . . .
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 . . .
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.JPG)
