Levedy

Wet Sheep, Car Purgatory, Church Raffles, and the Laundry Gods

Ah, me.

When it rains, it pours.

I haven’t been blogging because I have been way too busy. It’s fall hell again, and I’m teaching quite a bit. My blogging will probably be spotty for another two weeks or so. Send complaints to: thisisfreewhatdoyouexpect@levedy.com

My days go from bad to worse. This morning was my first chance in weeks to clean anything in the house. I mopped, I thought about vacuuming, I scrubbed, I thought about vacuuming some more, and I washed every last scrap of clothing in the house. I have (well, had, but I’ll get there) this great woolly duster thing. It came from Target and didn’t cost me much, so I figured the fibers were some genetically modified vinyl (now made with Sheepitol – for that woolly fresh texture!) and not the real sheepy thing. How wrong I was.

I went to the sink to rinse off said duster. Baaaaaaad idea. Bad on the scale of letting an egg rot in your house. Bad on the scale of working in a Limburger factory. Bad on the scale of the Augean stables. Wet dog smell has nothing on wet remains-of-sheep smell.

The house still reeks, twelve hours later. It’s never going to leave my nostrils.

Why did I have so much time to stink up the house you ask? Easy! My car died this weekend. My car Shuffled Off To Buffalo on Saturday in the middle of Sahara Boulevard (one of the biggest streets in Vegas.) I was able to pull over to the right, hitch a ride from a Good Samaritan to a shopping center to a pay phone (what a day to forget my cell phone at home!), and walk to my mother-in-law’s house to call a tow truck (Speaking of Herculean labors, try getting a tow truck at 5:45 on a Saturday evening. I’d rather muck out stables).

A nice AAA guy towed the car to the VW Dealership, where it will continue to sit while I decide if I can/want to spend $3000 to fix a $4000 car. Apparently, snapping a timing belt is akin to stabbing someone in the jugular. It’s remotely possible that the person will survive, but highly unlikely. You’d have better odds of winning the lottery...

...which brings me to the next disappointment. As part of the Greek Festival fundraiser, the church sold raffle tickets to win a new car (a Mercedes, woo hoo). The VW busts on Saturday, and the drawing for the Mercedes was Sunday. If fate liked me, I could have won the car and all would be fixed. So did I win the car? Noooooo. The planets have aligned in a “let’s really mess with Jennifer’s life” position. (I believe that the stars take on the form of a human fist, with only the middle finger raised.)

The only bright spot in the past few days was the $9.00 I found in the dryer. Okay, so the $9 was from my own jeans pocket, but hey! It’s $9.00. Now I can start saving for a new car.

Until then, it looks like I’ll be depending on a combination of Dimitri and CAT buses for a while. Hey, maybe my days will get a little better: maybe I’ll slip on something and end up in traction.

Banana anyone?

Posted by Jen at September 20, 2004 10:59 PM