Untimely

This morning, I was driving my husband to work, an activity which I do a couple days a week and which we both enjoy. It's been very pleasant to have that time to spend together. Meelyn and Aisling don't like to come with me in the mornings because they prefer to get themselves up and start on their schoolwork. They do like to come in the evenings, however, and I've mentioned in other posts about how we enjoy praying the rosary on the way home.

Buddy was acting funny today, however. When I pressed my dainty hoof on the accelerator, nothing much was happening. But of course, that didn't happen while we were still close to our house. No, that happened about twelve minutes out on the highway.

"I'm pressing my foot on the accelerator and nothing much is happening," I said to my husband, watching the rpm gauge on the dash leaping like a trout stranded on a riverbank.

"Oh God..." groaned my husband, bringing his palm to his forehead with a resounding smack. "Oh, please, no..."

"What does it mean?" I asked timorously, allowing Buddy to coast into a gas station parking lot where everyone else was putting gas in their cars that run and coming out of the mini-mart with cups of fragrant coffee and little sausage biscuits and getting into their cars that run and driving off to work with nary a care in the world, or at least that's how it seems when you're in your forties and sitting in a vehicle that you've borrowed from your dad and it just died.

Truthfully, when Pop and Nan dropped the Blazer off, my dad told us, "Now, this thing is pretty rough, and to tell you the truth, I don't know how much longer it's going to last. You can use it as long as you need to, but it's got a lot of miles on it and it does some funny stuff every now and then, so just be aware..."

By "funny stuff," my husband and I ascertained that my father didn't mean that Buddy would suddenly grab up an open mic and say, "Hi there, ladies and germs, it's great to be here with you tonight. Say, have you heard the one about the duck, the priest and the rabbi who met up in front of an ATM?"

So Buddy's demise wasn't a total shock, although the abruptness of it all and the fact that it happened fifteen minutes before my husband was supposed to arrive at work did cause a few moments of fluent swearing, although we both managed to confine our vulgarities to the inside of our heads. For the moment. My husband did offer a devout word of thanks that the bad stuff happened while he was still with me -- "Thank GOD it didn't decide to do this when you were by yourself along the state highway" -- and we turned Buddy's nose and started gingerly off toward home.

It took us about half an hour and every single frigging Ameritech phone we passed by the side of the road was out of order. Both of us are people who hate being late. HATE IT. And the fact that my husband was now fifteen minutes past due with no word to the manager was going briskly over our nerves like a belt sander on a champagne flute. When we finally rolled into the driveway, my husband launched himself out of the truck and hit the ground running to get to a phone, where he talked to a manager and found a friend who was willing to come get him in exchange for gas money.

So now I'm sitting here at the computer, typing feverishly, trying to keep my mind busy so that I won't have to think about how we're going to go get groceries or go to Mass because right now, I feel like I could use a Zoloft about the size of my head in order to get through the rest of this day.

And I, I'd like to point out, have a really big head.