Flat, fixed; or, another great reason to shop close to home

In the waiting room at my tire place I was chatting with a stranger about how long it's been since our cars had last suffered flat tires. Seems like in my youth road trips and outings were regularly interrupted by flat tires, dead batteries, defunct alternators, cracked radiators, and rusted-out mufflers. Where are the car repairs of yesteryear?

Facebook tells me that I brought that car home exactly two years ago. In that time I've had to take it into the shop for routine maintenance and three (!) recall notices, but not once have I needed any non-recall repair. I don't remember the last time I had a flat tire, but I can recall several times when AAA visited campus to do minor repairs on previous cars--flat tires, dead batteries. Each time I had to wait two to three HOURS before they even arrived. I used my AAA membership much more frequently back when I was driving old clunkers, but now I don't remember the last time I called them--which is great because their hold music is terrible. Trust me--I've heard a lot of it.

Today I was in the tire place because I'd been running some errands over my lunch break (from campus meetings) and suddenly heard a ka-thunk, followed quickly by a dashboard warning about tire pressure, followed by a loud hissing noise from the left rear tire, so I drove three blocks to the place where I had just bought all four of those tires just over a month ago. I could feel the tire softening as I drove. By the time I'd parked, it was no longer capable of performing the primary function of a tire.

I don't know what I ran over but the hole was too big to repair. So I had to buy a new tire, and of course I wanted one to match the other three (expensive) tires because they were practically new. But here's why I appreciate my friendly local tire place: I didn't fuss or complain or even ask for a break, but the owner spontaneously offered to cut the price in half since I'm a pretty loyal customer. They installed the new tired and got me back on the road in under 30 minutes.

I'm just glad I was close enough to drive to the shop before the tire went completely flat. If I'd had to call AAA, I'd still be on hold.    

Chicken Run

From our bedroom window we can look down the hill to see the chicken run in the lower meadow, but at that distance the chickens look like waddling blobs. Up close they're more handsome. At first they resist coming out from under their coop, but finally they emerge to scrabble toward the feed bucket and nudge each other out of the way to get to lunch. Soon a kingfisher chattering past sends them all scurrying for cover. They've nothing to fear from the kingfisher, but I hope they know enough to hide from hawks. The chicken run should protect them from earthbound predators, but we rely on their instincts to protect them from the hawks.

  

Excavating the family landfill

The donation door at the local Goodwill store stands open and the attendant waits to help me unload my car, but I'm afraid to open the hatchback lest I trigger a landslide or tsunami or pyrochlastic flow of dusty bags bulging with discarded stuff. Honda claims my HR-V has 24.4 cubic feet of cargo space, and I've crammed every inch of it with a shifting mound of detritus threatening to bury me alive--all of it removed from just one closet.   

Granted, it's a big closet, but it doesn't get much daily use. Years ago that closet turned into the place where we stash things we can't just throw out lest someone needs them someday, and over time the closet turned into a family landfill seasoned with mouse droppings and fluffy bits of insulation that float down whenever the access panel for the attic gets opened.

Until this morning it was almost impossible to set foot inside that closet, which is a problem because of our impending bathroom renovation. Yes, we are finally exiling the purple toilet, sink, and tub, tearing off the shiny plastic wall panels, installing usable storage, and replacing the improperly vented ceiling fan that insists on sprinkling fluffy bits of insulation all over the bathroom every time we turn it on. (Both the hall closet and the purple bathroom are in the older part of the house, where mouse droppings and fluffy bits of insulation are persistent elements of the decorating scheme.) Workers will need to access the attic to install the new ceiling fan, but they can't do that without climbing the Leaning Tower of Fluff-Covered Detritus in the hall closet.

So this morning I got to work excavating every layer of that closet, vacuum at the ready to suck up all the fluff and droppings. I found old clothes I'd bagged up to take to the Goodwill, old clothes I needed to bag up to take to the Goodwill, old clothes that could have a chance at new life for someone committed to regular dry-cleaning bills, and even a few old clothes that sparked enough joy to merit giving them a wash and returning them to my closet.

Also hats--sun hats, cowboy hats, Santa hats. Old paint cans with solid lumps of paint at the bottom. Two nonfunctioning CD players. Adapter cords that don't fit any of my current equipment. A hefty camera tripod and a video camera that hasn't been out of its carrying case for at least 15 years. Wrapping paper, gift bags, red velvet bows. Decorative gifts given by people ignorant of our household aesthetic--always a tricky issue because what if those people shop at the Goodwill? How will they feel if they recognize the items I've regifted?

Things I kept: Three jackets and three nice shirts. The paint cans (because the Goodwill won't take them.) The video camera (because someone who shall remain nameless is convinced that he'll use it someday.) Boxes of framed pictures and certificates I don't want to throw away but don't have room to hang on the walls. A few puzzles and games the grandkids might enjoy. A tangle of kites and a giant bubble wand. Dozens of empty hangers.

Now the hall closet has enough open space to make accessing the attic a breeze. Fluff and droppings are gone (for now) so I won't be embarrassed every time that door gets opened. The vacuum is full of yuck and dust, as is my nose. And my car didn't disgorge the entire mess at my feet when I opened the hatch, so I rewarded its hefty cargo space with a celebratory vacuuming.

The grandkids have always liked the purple potty and will be sad to see it go, even though it frequently fails at the chief task it exists to perform. As for me, I'm delighted at the prospect of a renovated bathroom, and if the price I have to pay to achieve that goal is a hall closet excavation, then let's get to work. 

Need a purple tub? I've got you covered.

A short cut to the AOA department

Summertime and the living is easily on the way to driving me bonkers. Fun weekend with the grandkids! Lazy Sunday afternoon nap! Monday mowing and cooking and sitting around reading--perfect! And then comes Tuesday.

Don't even get me started.

Today I have been running from pillar to post while trying to wrangle mounds of pettifogging claptrap standing in the way of a grant project. It's an exciting project--five-day Creative Writing day camp for local high schools students funded by the Department of Job and Family Services--and I'm working alongside some very creative and energetic people. 

But! 

I have to reserve rooms, but another organization has reserved EVERY ROOM in my building for three out of the five days of our camp. So I have to find space in another building, except I'm not familiar with room numbers in all our buildings so I have to walk around looking at rooms to see if they'll suit our purposes, and then I have to walk back to the administration building to confer with the room-reservation guru, who fortunately keeps a well-stocked candy dish on her desk. (Or, maybe, unfortunately.)

The grant was approved last week and the camp starts on June 9, so we need to buy some supplies; however, I can't submit a purchase order or use the College Amazon account until an account number is assigned to the grant. Unfortunately, the grant paperwork has not yet made its way to the person in charge of assigning an account number, so I have to email the grant-writer and all the grant-approvers to try to unclog the pipeline and get the paperwork flowing smoothly.

Further, at our planning meeting this morning I assembled a list of about a dozen questions that can be answered only by the people who normally inhabit three offices whose doors today are tightly shut and locked. Out of the office, apparently. I mean, it's as if these people had lives or, I don't know, summer vacations. Let's hope they're watching their email.

My plan was to spend one long morning on campus taking care of every little pettifogging detail, but all those dead ends and closed doors mean I'll have to come back and try again another day. Next time I'll head straight to the Department of Aggravation, Obfuscation, and Angst. All roads lead there eventually, so why not take the short cut? 

Locking through

Between Writing Wednesday and a heavy rainstorm yesterday I squeezed in a quick visit to the Muskingum River lock in Devola, where I enjoyed a casual lunch while watching the Valley Gem sternwheeler make its way through the historic lock. 

The lock-and-dam system on the Muskingum River dates back to 1836, though the structures have been renovated several times over the years. The locks are among the oldest hand-operated locks in the nation still in use and measure 35 feet wide by 160 feet long, which is barely big enough to contain the Valley Gem. 

I watched the lockmasters strain to push the large iron levers to open the upstream gates and let in water, which slowly raised the sternwheeler to the upstream water level. Crew members released the ropes and kicked the boat away from the side of the lock so it could make its way out the upstream gates and on up the river--straight into a sudden shower.

When I'm surrounded by technology so complex it seems magical, it's encouraging to see a geriatric feat of engineering prove its worth. Actual human beings turn the levers that move the gears that open the gates, and it's all visible right before our very eyes--not a hidden algorithm anywhere. The locks that originally opened the Muskingum watershed for commerce and transport now support tourism, but seeing the sternwheeler chug through the locks and up the river reminded me that human ingenuity has mastered a lot of knotty problems--and that's just the kind of insight that floats my boat.

Write write write--but why?

This is it--the first Writing Wednesday of summer break. I'm sitting in a library classroom tapping on my laptop alongside two faculty colleagues, three of us in all--a small start perhaps attributable to some problems in communication. I faithfully followed new campus procedures for getting the word out but somewhere there's a glitch in the system. Three people! Better than none, I suppose.

I have spent two hours writing, although perhaps "writing" isn't entirely the right word. I have revised my Agnes essay to include info about that historic hurricane and sharpen up some phrasing; now I need to decide whether I want to call my brother and ask what he remembers about our family's encounter with the worst natural disaster in Pennsylvania's history. And then I need to figure out where to submit the essay. Literary magazines are closing and possibilities are shrinking, so I'll need to do some serious research.

And then I opened the folder containing the larger project I started during last summer's Writing Wednesdays. I'm happy with the first chapter and I'd love to submit it somewhere as a stand-alone essay, but again, where? It's too personal and not theoretical enough for an academic journal but too steeped in literature for a casual outlet. Where are the hybrid publications where an intelligent person can combine close reading with practical classroom experiences? (Asking for a friend....)

I haven't looked at the rest of the project since last August and so I was surprised, both by how ambitious it is and by how fragmented. I see some lovely sentences and paragraphs but an awful lot of gaps and brackets. I'm reminded of the seven-page single-space notes-for-a-memoir document we discovered among my father's papers after his death: whenever he seemed to be getting close to a really interesting part of his life, he would write ETC. Now it's too late to ask what all those etceteras were eliding.  

And that's the conundrum about this writing project: as I near the end of my teaching career, I feel the need to pass on a whole bunch of etcetera lest it perish with my passing, but it's hard to write when I don't know have the first clue who might serve as audience. Writing these essays is either an opportunity to pass on some important insights or a massive, thankless waste of time.

For right now, though, it's therapy. Putting down words, imposing some order on the chaos, feels like an accomplishment. And that's why I look forward every week to Writing Wednesdays, even if, in some sad dark corridor of my mind, I fear that every word I write takes me closer to The End.

Settling into summer break

I know I've settled into summer break when I'm halfway through the morning but still can't be sure what day it is, or when you ask me how I've spent my day and my response is, "Um...give me a minute."

Sunburn on my forearms from weed-whacking and mowing this morning, crick in my neck from sitting on the back deck staring up toward the top of the tulip poplar tree, camera at the ready, in case that oriole comes back, except it has a remarkable ability to appear only when the camera is inaccessible. True story: I was sitting in the living room reading when I felt I was being watched, and when I turned and looked out the big picture window, I saw an oriole perched on a potted plant looking right at me not two feet from my face. Where was the camera? In the car, just behind the oriole. 

I've seen an oriole (possibly the same one) flitting about the top of the maple tree out front and then flying away the minute I picked up the camera, and there it was again this morning at the top of the tulip poplar out back--twice!--but I sat out there with the camera for 40 minutes hearing it sing from a tree halfway down the cliff but never seeing it within shooting distance.

Big bowl of quinoa salad in the fridge--something I always make at the beginning of summer break for reasons I don't even recall except that it's cool and lemony and makes a great lunch out on the deck on a lovely spring day, especially when orioles are singing (but not posing for photos) nearby.

I saw swallows, turkey vultures, and a red-tailed hawk, but no oriole. Didn't see any goldfinches and wondered where they'd gone--we used to have them all over the place year-round but lately it's a nice surprise to see even one. Saw two male hummingbirds fighting over a feeder, but no oriole. Saw mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, a phoebe, but no oriole--but every time I started to pack up the camera to go inside, the oriole would sing tantalizingly close but still out of sight.

It's out there still, I'm certain, and I'm sure at some point I'll be unable to stop myself from going out to stalk it some more, camera in hand. Because that's what summer break is for. Sure, I'll have to get my act together to plan some meetings and write some reports in the next couple of weeks, but while I'm still bouncing back from the busy semester, I'll enjoy some long lazy days that don't require me to remember their names.