Tales from the Shark Tank

I made my first foray into Chicago via commuter train on Sunday. If I’m going in for museums or other downtown sorts of things, I don’t think I’ll ever drive myself again. It was much easier than fighting construction, Chicago drivers and downtown city parking.

My friend K. and I had plans to wander around the Art Institute and then go have dinner at a cafe she found that she describes as transporting one instantly back to 1971. The cafe will have to wait, as by the time we finished with the museum she wasn’t sure about the timing of driving to a place in the ‘burbs.  Having a leisurely dinner and getting me back for the six o’clock train was problematic, and the 8:00 p.m. train would have gotten me home rather too late. We wandered down the road until we spotted a Thai restaurant, and ate there instead. I’m always up for pad thai.

It was a truly marvelous day, in spite of the cold I was fighting off. (It caught me today, of course.) For all the years I’ve known K., and all the time we’ve spent talking, I had never gone museuming with her. And I’m not sure quite which I enjoyed more – looking at the art work or watching her look and talking about it. It doesn’t matter, though. It was a fantastic time, one I’ll remember. That’s what matters.

The adjustor for our insurance company told me on Friday afternoon that I needed to retrieve personal possessions from my husband’s car.  That was fine.  But he said I had until Tuesday morning, and somehow or other that message missed one of the necessary recipients.  That would be the tow yard.

So early this afternoon, having finally managed to contact someone who could give me directions, I betook myself there, only to find that the car had been taken to the insurance company’s private lot first thing this morning.  I called the adjustor and pointed out, very politely, that the weekend does not provide opportunity for retrieval of possessions because the tow yard office is closed, and so I’d been given no time whatsoever to retrieve things.  And now, instead of being a half hour away, the car is a bit above an hour away.

I have recieved profuse apologies for the mess-up, with the comment that the retrieval folks are never that quick off the mark.  Well, perhaps that’s “hardly ever”.  They did offer to pay the gas for me to make the longer drive, and really, at this point that’s all that they can realistically do.  But they can’t give me back my time either today or tomorrow, and it’s that, far more than gas money, that distressed me.

In the course of lunch with 8 second grader’s the other day, one little boy informed me with great relish that should I fail to wear green on St. Pat’s Day, I would perforce be pinched. “But I always have green on myself” I told him.  “I have green eyes”.  He looked closely, then wailed “That’s not fair.”

The good news: Every human being mentioned in this post is fine.

The bad news: My husband wrecked his car enough to be undrivable.

The good news: We have rental car coverage.

The bad news: We do not yet have the rental car.

The good news: We can replace the car.

The bad news: This was the newer of our cars, with literally half the milage of mine.

The good news: I’m in good enough shape now to walk to my son’s school and really not notice. I’d promised to meet him for lunch, then ended up giving my husband my car for the day. Took stock of the weather – not too cold, not too windy – shrugged, and walked. When he started school last August I could have done it, but would have been quite wiped out by it.
The best news: Neither my husband nor the other driver was hurt at all.

So what happened? Well, as I was getting myself launched into the day, the phone rang. I missed answering it, but got the voice-mail. It was my husband, telling me that he’d wrecked the car, that he was fine, and that he needed me to meet him at his office. I remembered the three depositions he’d mentioned this morning, one of which is in Chicago, and headed out the door without further delay. It seems he came up on a solid line of traffic and didn’t realize until too late that it wasn’t moving. So his car is a squished thing, but he is not despite the fact that the air bag, which certainly should have deployed, didn’t.

I’m going to go call a friend I’ve found here recently and ask her where she’d recommend acquiring a car. Then I’m going to go finish the laundry. Everyone is unhurt, so on balance, really, there is no bad news.

Last night we had a minor household disaster.  I’d been doing laundry, and the machine was draining when it was borne in upon me that the splashing sound I was hearing did not seem to be muffled or contained by the pipe.  I ran to check to find that indeed, the standpipe was clogged and the wash-water draining merrily away all over the floor.  Turning off the washer left me with a half-finished load, and some experimentation showed that I could drain it for perhaps 5 seconds before I had to wait and let the water slowly subside in the pipe.  Not good.  Drain snake wielded by rank amateurs (both the adults in the household) had no perceptible effect.  More not goodness.

So ok, this is one of those times one is grateful to be renting.  The landlord got the plumber out here, with his monster motorized drain snake, which was to my little gizmo rather as the Hoover Dam is to a pool-toy.  It took him very little time, and when he was done I asked the nature of the problem.  Iron in the water that grows on the pipe walls, he said, and eventually crumbles off and creates a sudden blockage.

Which leaves me with a question.  When arteries get lined with sediment we call it arteriosclerosis.  What is it called when the same thing happens to household plumbing?

Out at Archland to let my son run off small-boy steam in their indoor playground, one of the other mothers overheard him say to me “Sophia is sweet as honey and soft as velvet, and I love her, mom.”  When he’d run off, she looked at me quizically and asked “isn’t he a little young to be saying something like that about a girl?”  Both enlightenment and amusement followed upon my explanation that Sophia is our cat.

The weekend was tremendous fun, if I have only just caught up with myself from it. Our son having a 4 day weekend from school (President’s day plus a pre-scheduled and unused “snow day”), it seemed the perfect time to take him to see multiple grandparents. Unfortunately my husband couldn’t claim either Friday or Monday off, but hey, life’s like that. So arrangements were duly made, and off we went.

I’d arranged to meet Li and another friend for lunch and shopping on Saturday. It took me until Monday, though, to figure out what we’d done. We have formed the Girl Geeks chapter of Ladies Who Lunch. With a tech writer, a lawyer who writes (everything from random fiction to Divorce 101 outlines) and a psychiatrist who writes (Transfomers fan fiction), what else could it be? I’m fairly sure the conversation would have bewildered and befuddled anyone trying to listen to us, but that’s all to the good. And we did a lot of laughing and had a lot of fun. Li took us to get our nails done, which was an entirely new adventure to both Kevona and me. It may have been the first time, but I assure you, it will not be the last.

Sunday saw me and Joseph at my folks’ home for most of the day, and indeed there the geekfest continued, this time batting historical analysis around with my dad as I cleaned.  Doesn’t engage much of the brain to pick up newspapers, note by the date that they should have been thrown away long ago, and proceed to accomplish the task.  Nor did finding things to throw away take much intellectual focus.  As my husband put it, just reach out and grab something; it’s a target rich environment.  I know I’m getting stuff out faster than it can re-accumulate, because I can generally see where I left off each time I come, yet the progress is barely perceptible.  Oh, well.  Just because it goes slowly doesn’t mean it doesn’t go, or need to be done.  And discussing whether John Paul II left the Church in better or worse position as far as world perception goes does make the time go quickly.  Like I said, it was another geek-fest.  This is a good thing, because while not as pleasant overall as the Girl Geeks gathering (I hate cleaning), it will be happening again and again, until the task is complete.

This morning, our resident Mighty Huntress presented herself at the door with a dead mouse in her mouth. She waited to be sure we’d all seen it and duly admired her skills (and believe you me, we did) before she devoured the morsel. Current score is cat 7, traps 2. The combination of that and our son’s delight in the cat are reconciling my husband to the whole pet thing with remarkable speed.

Now we have a thunderstorm outside with a tornado watch. Our son was desperately worried about the cat, so I went ahead and brought her in, on the theory that she would probably be content to remain in lap. And so she has. She is currently tucked under my left arm, front paws resting just below the mouse buttons on the laptop, watching intently as these strange shapes appear on the screen. For all the world, she looks as if she’s reading along, and for all I know she is. But she is also making typing quite an interesting experience. Now, I know some of you out there are quite well accustomed to the concept of laptop computer sharing space with laptop feline, but I am not. I must admit, though, I’m enjoying it.

I’m also laughing. This is the cat the neighbors insisted was feral. She’s been in my lap, purring continually, for the last hour and a half.  She regularly comes to the door mewing insistently, seeking affection rather than food. Feral? Eh, not so much.

Our son’s class made robots out of boxes for their Valentine’s cards.  The projects were done at home, and some of them were very clever.  Ours was too big to take on the bus, so I drove our boychick to school.

As soon as we walked out the door, the wind caught the thing, assembled out of two cardboard boxes.  The head was held on with hot-glue, which did not prove to be a match for a stiff north-country breeze.  So I carried the pieces into his classroom, asking the teacher for tape to effect repairs, with the comment that the wind had decapitated the thing..

My son added “It lost its head, too!”

Our son still has difficulty pronouncing a lot of words, so when he consistently referred to today’s holiday as “Valentime’s Day” I didn’t think too much about it.  But the suggested project for a box to receive Valentine cards was a robot, which we made last night.  It being too big for him to carry on the bus (it’s near as tall as he is), I took him and his robot to school.  During that three minute drive, we had an interesting conversation.

“Is it Valentime’s Day, mom?”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Mom, what does Valen mean?”

And then he wondered why I choked.