Threes

All good things happen in threes. And apparently, all bad things do too. And that is the reason why this morning, I felt all of out whack when I had to get in a car that was parked in the driveway as opposed inside a cozy garage. Now I don't want you to think that I am some sort of neurotic anal-retentive person who gets upset when things change just a little, because although I definitely have slightly "odd" tendencies (for one I seem to believe that doors can unlock themselves after you've checked them once), I am not that bad that I can't handle a car parked outside as opposed to inside. However, that is assuming we're talking about a situation where a) I'm actually awake, b) my brain is on, c) I had a great night's sleep, and d) it's not oh dark thirty in the morning. You see, in order to make it through my morning, which, by the way, starts at 4:50 am, a feat which cannot be repeated often enough, I need to stick to a set routine, where things can always be found in the same place, things and people generally respond in the same manner, and I can make the same movements (reaching for something, walking to get something) without thinking about them. So when my car is parked outside, as opposed to indoors, that means a large chunk of my routine needs to be altered, which just completely upsets the whole point of being able to do things without thinking about them. For one thing, I can't just load my workbag, laptop, lunch stuff in as I run around doing other things. When your car is parked outdoors, that entails turning lights on, unlocking doors, locking them, and it's too much of a hassle for 5:30am. It also means that I need to calculate in time to defog and decodense my windows, which means hunting for a squeezy, and making sure I don't get my clothes all wet and dirty. Needless to say, I did not figure I had to clean my windows, and did drive to work with a damp shirt. And I'm also pretty sure I left my waterbottle in the garage.

So why all the hassle? Well, we pretty much had the weekend from hell. First, on Friday, husband-dear's laptop finally died. Granted, it had been coming on for a while. The fan had died last year, and in a fit of both ingenuity and frugality, the love of my life purchased a tiny fan to cool his notebook. But a few days ago, the heat finally got to his poor Dell, and it could no longer be prodded to life. Although we were less than thrilled, we were also fairly zen about it, as we knew it was coming. Then, just a few hours later, our trustworthy vacuum cleaner passed away. The belt came off, which I have to admit, had been occuring more frequently in the past few months, but this time, part of the housing cracked, and there was simply no fixing it. We had had the vacuum cleaner for over a decade, so although at this point we were definitely less than thrilled, we were able to tell ourselves that at least we got our money's worth out of our trusty vacuum cleaner. But the real kicker, and the reason why my car had to spend the night outside, happened on Saturday morning when our brand new second-hand riding lawnmower died on husband-dear just as he had finished mowing half the frontyard. Husband-dear did all sorts of complicated things to it, things involving contraptions whose purpose I never quite understood, such as the carburator, the fuel pump, and the carborator filter, but the lawnmower would not come back to life. Husband-dear's ability to cuss up a storm, however, did, as did our driveway, which is now enlivened with a disco-pattern of oil splatters, which, when I saw it, kicked the life right back into my desire to kick something too.

So after spending a ridiculous amount of money at the local vacuum store, and the local BestBuy, we now are the proud, but slightly unhappy and definitely poorer, owners of a brandnew Toshiba laptop and a beautiful, but simple, Cirrus vacuum cleaner. We have yet to fix the lawnmower, and after conversing with the local Sears store, and discovering that we may have some warranty left on the beast, settled on borrowing a neighbor's John Deere for the time being. Now, at least husband-dear can finish mowing the yard, thus allowing his sould to rest in peace. But since you can't leave a John Deere parked out in your driveway, not even in rural Georgia, although perhaps I should say, especially not in rural Georgia, my car had to bite the dust and spend the night outside. And that is why I say that this had better be it as far as stuff breaking around our house. No more!