Blinkers and Dumpsters

It was an insightful week. I know. I know. Listening to insights that aren’t yours is right alongside listening to the religious experience or latest interesting dream of someone else. Each is sufficient to putting one in a state of catatonic boredom.

Forging right ahead, however, within ten days the security system on my car locked. * The refrigerator froze-up twice. * The car’s blinker system went haywire. * I came close to snapping off my left hand while tossing a bag of used cat box litter into the dumpster.

The security system: Damn thing went berserk in the HEB parking lot in 92 degree heat. All attempts to do anything with key set off the anti-theft alarm. Want to know how well that worked as a theft deterrent? Not one person stopped to ask if someone was attempting to steal my car. Oooh, no. They just moved away to escape the noise.

Not counting myself, I had perishables in the car. A neighbor from my former life offered me a ride home.  She was gracious, and I was embarrassed. (This reminds me, I must write a thank-you note.)

The next day I went to the dealership where they reprogrammed the key advising me to stop dropping my keys as much as I obviously, to them, do. Oh well.

The refrigerator: My refrigerator froze up which oxymoronically means that the inside heats up. Go figure. After going for coolers and ice, and stowing the perishables I had an empty refrigerator which is the easiest to clean, so I did.

The maintenance staff came and did maintenance staff stuff, unfroze it so it can become cold again. Two days later it freezes up again, and I must repeat steps 1 through 4. This time I clean the freezer. Clean freezer. Clean refrigerator. No good deed goes unpunished, and the maintenance persons tell me they will bring in another refrigerator.

I ask the maintenance staff to let me clean the nameless horrors that live under and behind refrigerators when they make the switch. They said they’d take care of it. I had to restrain myself from kissing them both on the mouth.

Then I remembered. These men are some woman’s son, grandson, or significant other. I’ve got a male in each of those categories myself. No way in hell they cleaned up that mess. They brought in the new refrigerator and parked that sucker right on top of the mess, took a shop rag and pushed everything that showed back under the refrigerator.

Blinker anxiety attack: Next, my blinker signal begins the rapid chattering that is car-speak for “I have a bulb out.” I go to my neighborhood Jiffy Lube and ask them to replace the bulb. They do a visual check. No bulbs out. They do discover that my courtesy lights are out. I did not know that car manufactures build in courtesy options. I feel encouraged that what we lack most as drivers is a feature in many cars. We may not have courteous drivers, but we do have courteous cars.

Let me interrupt my narrative to commend Jiffy Lube. My first visit was the result of a coupon for an oil change. At the onset I told them I’d struck out on my own and didn’t know squat about car maintenance, but I was willing to learn. 

They never respond my questions as dumb questions. To my credit I do refrain calling mechanical parts doobers, thingy, or that little squiggly part.

The primary reason I continue to be a loyal customer and recommend them to others is because I went in for a scheduled oil change. On the way to my car, the technician said, “I noticed that one of child carrier’s belts was lose. I tightened it and the checked all the others and tightened them.” Then and there I would have tipped that man a $100 if I’d had it.

My hand, cat litter, and the dumpster: I changed the cat litter. Because I scoop twice daily and top off with a bit of fresh litter, there is a hefty amount of litter, sans pee and poop, in the cat box. (This is important to know for later.) I dump the litter into my Target bag…love the Target bags just the right size and strength…tie it shut, wrap the loops around my wrist so I don’t tumble down the stairs with my heavier-than-normal load of shit.

Get to the dumpster. Pitch in the first bag of scooped pee and poop. Next the heavy Target bag of litter, wrapped around my hand so I could negotiate the stairs.

If you do your own cat maintenance and have a dumpster, you know you can’t heave in a bag of used litter into a dumpster lest you rip it and have used litter raining down on you. You must fling it over. The move is a combination of a discus throw and a pole vault.

I execute the perfect launch, and in that split second when all is too late to be undone, I realize the bag remains wrapped around my wrist and hand and there is no trash in the dumpster to stop the free-fall of 15 pounds of cat litter.

After a moment of shrieking pain, the bag slips off, not breaks away…Target bags do not break away... I make a mental not do that again. Walking back to my apartment, I look at my hand horrified to see what looks like a very large leech taking up residence in the space where some necessary-looking blood vessels used to be.

If I could make a fist, I’d drive over and show the grandbabies. They’d be impressed, and I’d get the grossest-injury-of-the-week award.

Cell phone bellies up:  Saturday my cell phone went on the fritz. I could not make nor receive calls. This is serious because it’s the only phone I have.

I needed to know the carrier to contact for service. This entails a call to the one with whom I no longer cohabitate. One word. The information I needed was one word. What I got was a detailed plan of action. Calling the phone company was not one of the actions in the plan.

I politely terminated the call, drove to my daughter’s who has a land line, called ATT, the service tech pulled the magic levers, and my phone was working. It took 15 minutes including the drive.

Here’s the insight: Nuisance problems are just that, a nuisance. Left to my own wits, I can deal with the problems of daily living just fine. I can take appropriate steps toward a solution, beginning with most obvious one first. Refrigerator out? Call maintenance.

Because I was free to deal with these issues by myself, they remained inconveniences (except for the dumpster incident which was a lesson in extreme pain). They are not personal affronts by the universe.

I have spent my life with people for whom nothing was simple and who took every ordinary glitch to the extreme. If you were late you were dead in a ditch. If you forgot a key, kick in the door. It’s very tiring to live that way.

But now I know I'm free to view and solve my problems another way. The astonishing part for me, not once during the past week did my stomach knot up nor did I ever think I was having a bad week…not counting the incident at the dumpster.