I am not having a good week
. . . & STINKEROONEY WEEK CONTINUES. I CAN’T DOODAH DOODAH WHATSIT DOODAH BELIEVE I FORGOT TO POST THIS LAST NIGHT [FIND THE APPROPRIATE FOOTNOTE ※ AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG, OKAY? IF I TRY & ADJUST ALL THE FOOTNOTE SYMBOLS SO THAT THIS ONE COMES FIRST WITH THE USUAL SINGLE ASTERISK, I WON’T GET THIS POSTED TONIGHT EITHER] BUT BE AWARE THAT THIS WAS WRITTEN ON THURSDAY
I AM HAVING A ROYALLY & SPECTACULARLY [deleted]*
. . . week. Weeks like this one shouldn’t be allowed out of Week School to harass & demoralise the general population. Weeks like this one need to take more classes in kindness, compassion . . . & maybe rational thought, & how to develop a clear comprehensible line from causes to consequences.
So, it began, as weeks often do, on Monday. You will probably not remember that when Kinsukey had her nervous breakdown, the garage, hereafter to be known as Bounder & Blighter Ltd, couldn’t see to her till this past Monday. When I was going to take her in, & they were going to make her all beautiful & perfect.
This is not what happened. I’m not actually sure what did happen, because it was pretty surreal. But I was told, after some energetic opportunity was taken to delineate my shortcomings, none of which aligned with my admittedly wonky grasp on reality, that they were not going to take her, & the flower of Scottish manhood I had the misfortune to be addressing then made little shooing motions with his hands, like you might do at an importunate dog,** turned his back on me, & sauntered off. So I left. What else was I going to do? But it’s really really disorienting & distressing to have your head ripped off & handed back to you on a platter for no reason you can comprehend, or even guess at, unless it had something to do with standing there in the flower’s space breathing. What effrontery. Although my brain will have suffered some oxygen deprivation between the time my head was ripped off & when I got it reattached, so maybe I’m missing something obvious. In hindsight I think being a clueless old woman with an American accent wearing gaudily patched jeans & Converse All Stars was doing me no favours with the flower. Yes! I am totally clueless!! I don’t know a piston from a carburettor***! I thought that’s what garages & mechanics were for! & I can’t help the old or the American accent, & I like gaudily patched jeans† & All Stars. & maybe he was having a bad day.†† But.
Meanwhile I now have a large expensive useless lump of metal sitting in the street.††† Yes, there are other garages in this town. Research has commenced. But they’re all full of men, you know? & Scottish men at that. & I’m feeling a little wary. But it would be nice to have a vehicle that runs.‡
So that was Monday.
Of course the ME reacted badly. As at least some of you will know, it’s VERY UNPLEASANT being yelled at when you haven’t deserved it, & the experience can shake people more stable than me. Me, I wasn’t all that stable even before I had the ME to give me an excuse. So I was not at my best when I tottered out with Genghis on Tuesday. & it was raining. I did have the sense-yes, really!-to stay in town on pavement. Nearly. I feel guilty & anti-dog if he doesn’t get any grass on our walks. So we were walking down the PAVEMENT running beside one of these tiny threads of water that the British-apparently including the Scots-insist on calling rivers. & because I am paranoid for reason, I already had Genghis on Very Short Lead, just long enough he could get to the grass while I remained safely on the pavement. & then there were, as feared, ducks. I forgot to mention, whenever I was doing my last rant on wildlife‡‡, that I hate ducks only second to baby seagulls, & for similar reasons. They WON’T FLY, & these are grown ducks, so they don’t even have the I-don’t-know-how-to-use-these-wing-things-yet excuse. They waddle along whining, just like baby seagulls. ARRRRGH. I had cranked Genghis in so I could grab his harness, & we were doing the stomping along toward them tactic that is pretty much my only odds for control, not to say survival. Except in this case, he lunged, my feet hit the grass &
WHAM.
I can’t remember if I’d gone into radio-blog silence by the time I had my rather worse Genghis-related fall last autumn, when I slid down a (short) hill at rocket-launcher speed & hit hard. I messed up my shoulder some, & I’m not sure it’s ever come entirely right. Tuesday was, as falls go, easy & straightforward. It was on grass, the slope was gradual, & unlike last autumn, I had that split-second to think GO LIMP before I hit-& I did. Go limp. I am surprisingly undamaged-including that I somehow fortuitously managed to hang onto Genghis’ brake-stopped short lead; if he’d hit the end of the extending lead with me flat on the ground & I didn’t let go fast enough, he would have dislocated my spine. Anyway. I’m okay. But the ME was even madder.
So you’ll forgive me if I’m TOO TIRED to tell you about Wednesday. Or today. Which isn’t quite over yet.‡‡‡ Uh oh.
* * *
* also involving italics
** Very like, indeed, the shooing motions I make at Genghis when he’s hanging around for a biscuit & knows perfectly well that he hasn’t earned one & isn’t going to get one, but thinks he might just try it on, I might be in a uniquely uncharacteristic indulgent mood. On the subject of biscuits, Genghis is always willing to try it on.
*** & yes, I had to look up the spelling of ‘carburettor’, of which there are about six choices, & spellcheck doesn’t like any of them.
† I have a frivolous mind. There is no way I would sit still to patch jeans if I couldn’t use loud, lurid fabric.
†† & I’m not totally clueless. I did not refer, in my nonconversation with the flower, to Kinsukey or she. I called her the campervan or it.
††† Liberally garnished with seagull crap. I have to go out there with a bucket again. In my copious free time. These guys-the ones I see are always guys, although I’m sure there are vehicularly obsessive women too-who are out there assiduously cleaning their cars every weekend, down to the toothbrush for the interstices of the hubcaps, give me an immediately blinding headache. Granted I’m the other end of the spectrum, & should be out there with a bucket more often.^ But get a life, guys. If you can’t think how, go volunteer at a homeless shelter or something. I wonder how many of these clean freaks even name their shining chariots of steel?^^
^ People who run a hose & a brush over their cars a reasonable sort of occasionally merely make me feel inadequate+. & I exempt owners of fabulous old cars from any ban on compulsive car-polishing. There’s someone who keeps his, dunno, 1938 limited edition Semiramide Estella or something, on the little cross street at the end of my pedestrian alley, & I would have said I don’t see him out there shining her up nearly enough, except that since she’s always dazzlingly beautiful, he’s either doing it in the mornings when I’m still prying my eyelids open & groping for my first cup of tea, which I left on the Aga the night before so I don’t have to wait to steep one, since the physical coordination to perform such a complex function is going to remain beyond me till I’ve had my first cup of tea, if you follow me, anyway, I think he has a Car Hob. Why shouldn’t friendly domestic hobs move with the times like the rest of us?++ I wonder what you leave out for a Car Hob? Do they still like milk? Kefir? Single malt? Gingerbread?
+ because I am inadequate about keeping cars & vans# clean
# & front steps & gates & painted iron fences & patio paving & doors & doorknobs &
++ voluntarily or otherwise
^^ or whatever cars are made of these days. I don’t think there’s much steel involved any more.
‡ even if I’m only using her to go to the dump. SIIIIIIGH. As soon as she’s running again I have a friend who is going to take me-us-Kinsukey, Genghis & me-out & show us things. She said this to me very firmly when she & another friend^ were here yesterday. We’d discussed this before, but I keep weaselling out of it. She’s catching on to me. She’s going to stop being British & polite, & become pushy & demanding. Yaaay.
^ who is having an even worse week than I am, we won’t go there
‡‡ & have I mentioned HEDGEHOGS yet? The thing is I like hedgehogs, but they are perhaps not the brightest, or maybe they’re having more difficulty entering the modern age than domestic hobs are^ & when I see one rolling itself up in the road, I tend to sigh heavily, & go risk life & limb to chivvy the blasted creature to the kerb. The risk of life & limb in this situation has nothing to do with cars. Imagine if you will trying to boot a rolled-up hedgehog gently to the side of the road while hanging on to your prey-mad, writhing, thrashing, coiled-steel-spring, screaming GWHP. Life-threatening? Mmph. Dragons are nothing to a GWHP in prey frenzy.
^ Maybe we should try leaving kombucha & gingerbread out for them? NOT milk. Do. Not. Give. Hedgehogs. Milk.
‡‡‡ Yes it’s past midnight. I don’t do time, right? Today isn’t over till I go to bed. Tomorrow starts when I go to bed, midnight^, 3 am, whatever. & whether I sleep or turn the light back on & read another murder mystery.
^ I wish
※ & if you’re wondering why it took me so long to notice, two reasons. First, I’ve had another hook, line & stinker of a day. & second, until Blogdad & I get the post counter sorted^, I’m FORBIDDING myself to check the hits on a new post more than once a day, & the later the better. I know by arcane means^^ that I’m getting a lot more hits than the blog counter will stoop to acknowledge, but it’s still kind of demoralising having your very own blog counter telling you nope, nobody cares. It adds helpfully, Why don’t you get a job . . . as a CAR MECHANIC??
^ which is to say Blogdad gets it sorted, with me running a kind of flapping-whining-baby-seagull impression while attempting to supply things like passwords & those multi-blasted verification codes & so on
^^ Other people’s arcanery, of course.
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