However, which is at the top of your list? We were rolling into West Ashley after a really hard ride on John's Island last Thursday, and one of our group nailed a huge concrete bowel movement that had wiggled from the rear end of a truck and become fossilized on the right side of the lane (a fecolith, one might say). He went over the bars and landed on his back in a busy intersection. Some of us immediately formed a phalanx and got him out of the road, as he was dazed and focused on determining the damage to his bicycle rather than recognizing that he was standing in significant traffic. The next time it happens to you, just remember that your body flushes with chemicals designed to convince you that nothing is wrong in such circumstances. In other words, take a few moments to thoroughly assess yourself...not just your rig. I say it as much for myself as for others. I'm just one of those unlucky bastards when it comes to traffic...reflective vest and associated obviousness be damned.
So what is it they say about bad things happening in trios? Well, let us begin the catalog and see if the number theory holds any water.
Firstly, I am still sick after nearly 10 months, and I have become nearly convinced that it is "simply" stress and my excessive physical exertion colluding and making me feel trapped in this fog. I've finally scheduled an appointment at a "real" doctor's office and am leaving the clinic that was my go-to for many, many years. I no longer feel like what is happening to me is within their purview, and they've always been so quick to throw prescriptions of amoxicillin at me and be done with it. At least the warmer months are upon us and, with them, a break for me from my regular role as full-time babysitter, so the stress levels should ebb a little. It's not so much that this Spring Break hasn't helped, but it takes me a while to allow myself to not feel guilty for being away from the girls. It's really gut-wrenchingly hard to just drop a role of complete supervision and ignore (at least temporarily or in part) what is going on at the house, but that is what, more and more, I'm feeling one must do if sanity is a desired state.
Tillie broke her ankle. She stepped off the folded gym mat in the living room one day and began crying way louder and longer than one would have expected for something so run-of-the-mill. I guess she stepped on it crooked, and they told us it looked like a buckle fracture, so on goes the cast. The cast got wet, so on goes the second cast. The cast got wet, again, so no more tub baths for babies! We're back in the living room for what I like to call bucket baths. One bucket for clean water, one for dirty...you can imagine the rest. The only real problem with this is that it means no night rides for me for a week or so, until she gets that damned thing off of her leg, since this style of bath does not work unless one of the babies is either locked in a chair or held or engaged by a second parent (we prefer to minimize the restraining they have to endure).
The no-ride schedule is fine, since I seem to have picked up some kind of strep throat thing (already waning), which I thought I might have gotten from Delia. She's had this horrible nocturnal cough, lately. We took her to the doctor, today, though, and it looks like she's just got, like her father, allergic distress from all the pollen on the oaks and others right now. Man, I swear pollen season is getting more and more concentrated (I wonder if anybody has done any work on that as it relates to climate change).
So, we've got two sick kids and one sick dad. That's three bad things. The only problem is that these three were preceded by three more.
First, let's get something straight. If a smoke alarm is going to go bad on you, it will happen at exactly the most inconvenient moment possible. How is, say, 3am? Did it simply start beeping because the battery was bad? No. It erupted full-blast for the few seconds it took me to leap from the bed, run 6 or 7 steps and push the silence button. Then what? "Do you smell smoke?" "I can't really smell anything." "I'll climb into the attic and just check everything up there." Take out the batteries, of course, since maybe one of them is bad, but they're wired together, and you don't know which is which. Oh, hell, better just go ahead and flip the breaker, too, so they don't get any ideas and get rowdy later on. Well, after the fact, I learned that one must "discharge the circuit" when cutting all power. This means pressing a button to get rid of electricity that is, I guess, stored in internal batteries in the alarms. It's good to know these things are so fail-safe, but without knowing about said discharge, one will be roused once more before sleep is again possible (they will discharge themselves, eventually, so the alarm went off a second time). So, the moral of the story...get new alarms if the ones you have are 10 years old and you have replaced all the batteries and still get a warning beep. They're relatively cheap, I only had to rewire one (it was a different model than the others), and we haven't had any problems with them since.
Secondly, the water filter in the refrigerator started leaking when I installed the new one. It turned out that I needed a new adapter for the filter. The price was only $7 or so, but nobody had it, locally, so for nearly another $7 I got it shipped. No problems since, and I've got 5 decent rubber o-rings off the old one that I'm sure will come in handy around the house or bike shop.
Finally, the microwave started igniting things. Turns out the warranty on this item is up this year, too. Incredible how accurately the mechanism corresponds to the warranty, eh? Planned obsolescence at its best. So, here we go with the stupid and downright angry looks I get asking for North American appliances on the local circuit. Turns out we're just going to have to pass on US-made this time (the quote I got the other day was $1019...no shit...the most expensive models I've seen from every other brand were nearly half that).
So, lots of downs, lately. Some ups, too, though. Spring Break is upon us, so I'll be getting in some extra rides and finally getting around to building the second cold frame. I just stumbled onto another huge batch of windows on the side of the road, today, though, so this may put me in the realm of having what I need for an entire greenhouse shed. The fruit trees flowered a little and are leafed out, and I think they might actually withstand the squirrels into a second year. A friend has asked me to work on the city's Bicycle Friendly Community application, which means an opportunity to emphasize how little we need separate facilities and additional impervious surface and how tremendously we need more education, enforcement, and encouragement.
I recently watched District 9, The Gleaners and I, Choke, Capitalism: A Love Story, and Harlan County, USA. None of these changed my life, though they were good, so I'll just rate them quickly with a 1-5 (3, 3, 4, 3, 4). The original Inglorious Bastards is next. It looks like a cheesy one, so, of course, I can't wait. I'll get around to Tarantino's one day. The original looks so much more inviting...for the same reasons this did.
