I haven’t felt so good in forever. I woke early. No back pain at all. I leapt out of bed and was able to write coherently about the Candy Factory. With a tidy house behind me, I went out to run errands all before lunch. I mean, what more could one want.
Grumpy awaited in the dark of the garage his stern piled high with boxes. I removed them to the other side of the garage and leapt up onto Grumpy’s nice, comfortable bench seat pulling the door shut behind me. Of such small things are a day made.
The door shut, but when I went to open it and reach for a forgotten trifle it wouldn’t open. The handle bend awkwardly toward me as if in slow motion, but the door stayed resolutely shut. There was a brain pause. You know those pauses. It was an “I’m trapped,” pause. An “I’m up against the side of the garage and can’t get out of this truck” pause, actually, and it took a second or two for my damaged brain to wake up and reach for the outside door handle. Slowly. For I have this muscle memory of reaching out and over for an outside handle on my sports car for a year. I was in perpetual agony for a year until I could afford to fix the door handle. Silly me.
Grumpy is just thirteen. A teenager. He arrived at our house with an electrical short thirteen years ago, and he grew into his own nickname over the next year while they struggled to find the short. He went through three clutches until a kind service writer straightened out the drive train….all the while telling us there wasn’t a problem. Lastly, the additives in California gas plugged his injectors, and the “GM fix” reduced his mileage from 30 MPG to 17. Finally he settled down into truck middle age, showing no sign of incontinence or senility. Just two weeks ago he passed his smog tests on a two year old tune-up with flying colors.
I did remember to reach outside the door at the cleaners. Slowly. I forgot and probably bent something at the fabric store. My wheeled work-bag ripped, and tho the shoe repair man wouldn’t mend it, I found fabric that might do the job. While I was in the Von’s shopping center, I stopped in the newly moved Discover Store…the American Cancer Society’s Thrift Shop. Yes, I reached outside and didn’t bend or strain anything there. I found a size sixteen Jones Of New York, navy blue wool blazer that was only tight in the middle for twenty bucks. I really needed a new work coat. Way in the back of the store was a brand new shirt with a Chevy Emblem on it. Only five bucks, but it said Silverado. Now Grumpy isn’t a Silverado, he’s a full sized Cheyenne. I didn’t buy the shirt.
Home, I forgot and used the handle further damaging something inside the door. After making too much chicken salad, I emailed G. “Did you want to call the dealer?” The reply said that we would take him in after work and get him his 5,000 mile tune up at the same time. “OK,” I replied, “but I’ll drive up and you can pick me up.”
I’m grateful our service writer is the nicest guy around. He’ll never make any money on us. We didn’t need the 5,000 mile pick me up as we had only gone 3,000 miles this last year. I asked him about headliners. G had put off getting this replaced. I understood. It only bothers me when I drive Grumpy too. So when G arrived, the two guys stood in the service drive and talked cars, and parts, and pricing, and trucks. He’d kept his old one. We had kept our old one. Smiles all around and we were off to see Duck.
First we stopped at the thrift store and bought the Chevy Truck dress shirt. We gotta keep our priorities straight here.
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I have been having great troubles posting here. Any time I edit an entry, edit the sidebar, or edit anything, the entry vanishes. I cannot tell you how frustrated I have been feeling. WYSIWYG editors are not the be all and end all of blogging for me. Not at all. At the moment, I can only put an entry here by using the "Edit Html" function...no copy and paste. I cannot even save as a draft and keep an entry. Knowing this programming, probably that's all I get this morning when I go to publish......silence and an empty blog.
On my other blog, I have an area that tells our day to day happenings. I had wanted to have that here too, but the Editor wouldn't save any entries after I edited this in the sidebar. I have written a careful short "Help" post twice, and gotten no help at all. Even more frustrating.
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