Loss of Control
at roughly 5:37 am the cat wakes me up by jumping on my face and foot. I walk into the kitchen and the window over the sink is open. I hear an unusually loud grinding noise coming from under our car in the driveway. I race outside with my phone. I bark "hey, hey, hey" and the grinding stops and a thin bearded man in a tie-dye shirt slides out from under the car with some sort of cutting instrument, jumps in a nearby idling car, project interrupted.
Later down in my office - normally my writing or focus time - I can’t write or focus. I talk to M to apprise her and go for a run. After I come home I look under car (here, car 1) to check the damage. The converter is cut, blade still on ground. This means I have to take car 2 (the one we don't drive b/c the engine we were advised is about to explode) to transport F to camp in N Portland, at a school off Lombard. Drive home and can smell the motor and its odors of imminent doom. Car 2 can wait though. One catastrophe at a time. N rides his bike to his camp, much nearer. I call our auto place about car 1. they refer us elsewhere.
I have therapy with my practitioner. much dominated by events of the AM. we go deeper and a triplet refrain is bouncing in my head: fear of death, fear of change, loss of control. all intellectual constraints that are harder to find when you're in it. We talk about the distractions of the era, the coexistence of joy and doom.
I drive car 1 to dentist - and it now roars like one of those unmuffled street racer deals - for scheduled deep scaling on quadrant 2 of 4, here the lower right. bone loss is discussed, deep pocketing is discussed, grim future decisions about an extant wisdom tooth are discussed. I leave numb-mouthed and bleeding and drive car 1 to muffler people. They need time so I have to leave car 1 there. I take bus home and at 2nd bus stop I get phone call that N hurt his hand at basketball camp. I arrive at home, get in car 2 (the exploding engine one) and drive to his camp to find his hand indeed looks hurt, jammed forcefully against a basketball in motion. I put bike in car, drive him home, engine not exploding. N ices while I clean out garage so as to park car 1 in it from here on out instead of driveway (but garage it should be noted is dumping ground containing furniture, boxes, drum set, ping pong table, giant spiders and making space is therefore no small feat.) M takes car 2 to get F. I get call from muffler people who say bad news the morning visitors also cut the O2 lines. I say what does that mean practically, to which I meant how does that impact the vehicle, to which she answers about 500 bucks. I say okay do it even though we don't have 10 bucks b/c we need at least one vehicle (and because the fix for the exploding car is a new engine so far more pricey a fix than this one.) M & F come home. I advise on the situation. Muffler people call to say car is done. Our friend Andrea is nearby by coincidence and gives me and F a ride to muffler people and M takes N in car 2 to KP to xray the hand.
F and I drive car 1 home and park in newly cleaned garage. (or whatever word is the analog for a bunch of junk moved to one side to allow a vehicle space to park in). M texts me that N's hand in fact contains a broken finger and will hence impact several upcoming events, birthdays, tournaments. We lament and make plans. I look over and stare at our elderly dog - his settings lately are sleep all day /breathe heavy when not sleeping/poop in house when not sleeping or breathing heavy and silently urge him to not make today the day. His eyes say either okay no problem or more salmon treats please or what is this world? but I don’t have the skills or space to translate so I go with choice 2.
M and N return home and N, his arm in a splint and a sling, notices the kitchen appliances are oddly all turned off. It turns out the GFCI into which several gadgets and items, notably the refrigerator, are plugged tripped. I click to reset. It won't reset. I go downstairs to breakers but nothing is tripped down there. So is GFCI outlet the issue or something else. We work backwards and determine that the fridge - which has been in slow descent into hospice for say the last 18 months or so - has selected today as the day to cross over. We hose out the spiderweb dusty coolers in the garage so we can transfer all the over-priced food into them, and M takes car 2 to get ice. New seasons has no ice. Safeway has no ice. They say check bimart or liquor store. Both are closed. M continues an ice quest while I make dinner for kids. Eventually ice is located in outer SE and M makes her way home. I put kids down while she frantically puts all the melting items into coolers and covers with ice. It's 10 pm.
I fall asleep at midnight with that earlier mentioned triplet ping ponging in my head, feeling grateful for healthcare and air conditioning and still being alive and vehicles in whatever state, my mind landing on loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control loss of control
