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Sep. 3rd, 2010 08:44 amWell, yesterday was an archetypally shitty day.
You always think when you’ve gotten it down to that essential Scarlett O’Hara moment – you know, the moment where Scarlett is sprawled on the red clay of Tara gnawing at potato tubers or something, raises one fist defiantly at the sky: as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again! – that things just have to get better. Except then there’s always another Scarlett O’Hara moment.
So today…
The car has been problematic these last few weeks. The night I got hauled off to the ER, it actually refused to start – Ben went out, jiggled some wires, and then it was okay. Except it wasn’t entirely okay, and one of the reasons I’ve been working like a busy little beaver these past few weeks is to generate the cash necessary to get a mechanic to look at it and make it better.
Until that moment I’d hit upon something that seemed to work: the moment before I turned the key in the ignition, I crossed myself.
Except today I didn’t cross myself.
And the car wouldn’t start again.
The starting motor’s fine. There’s juice in the battery. I actually know quite a bit about birthin’ babies, but I don’t know anything about cars, Mizz Scarlett. Still it sounded like the couple of times I ran out of gas on a dark, lonesome country road – many, many years ago, but it’s a sound you don’t forget. So I’m thinking it’s defective spark plug wires or something going on with the fuel lines.
In desperation, I call up Ben – I am the mother of his son, after all, and by my calculations, he owes me and anyway he was the one who jiggled the wires the night I got carted off to the ER. “What wires did you play with?”
“I can’t remember,” he said.
“Are you in Ithaca?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
TBC
You always think when you’ve gotten it down to that essential Scarlett O’Hara moment – you know, the moment where Scarlett is sprawled on the red clay of Tara gnawing at potato tubers or something, raises one fist defiantly at the sky: as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again! – that things just have to get better. Except then there’s always another Scarlett O’Hara moment.
So today…
The car has been problematic these last few weeks. The night I got hauled off to the ER, it actually refused to start – Ben went out, jiggled some wires, and then it was okay. Except it wasn’t entirely okay, and one of the reasons I’ve been working like a busy little beaver these past few weeks is to generate the cash necessary to get a mechanic to look at it and make it better.
Until that moment I’d hit upon something that seemed to work: the moment before I turned the key in the ignition, I crossed myself.
Except today I didn’t cross myself.
And the car wouldn’t start again.
The starting motor’s fine. There’s juice in the battery. I actually know quite a bit about birthin’ babies, but I don’t know anything about cars, Mizz Scarlett. Still it sounded like the couple of times I ran out of gas on a dark, lonesome country road – many, many years ago, but it’s a sound you don’t forget. So I’m thinking it’s defective spark plug wires or something going on with the fuel lines.
In desperation, I call up Ben – I am the mother of his son, after all, and by my calculations, he owes me and anyway he was the one who jiggled the wires the night I got carted off to the ER. “What wires did you play with?”
“I can’t remember,” he said.
“Are you in Ithaca?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
TBC
