…and it’s only uhh…damn, it’s already Wednesday?
Monday night my boys lost - that would be the Vikings. A couple of turnovers, a couple of lousy plays (how the HELL do you fumble the snap for the game-winning field goal?), a freaky fumble, and it’s kaput. 
This morning I wake up REALLY late, but still with enough time for a shower. Get dressed, run out to my car, turn the engine, and hear that lovely “rrRRRRRrrrrRRRRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRR” sound that I know and love so well. Check the fuses first thing, and of COURSE the one for the fuel pump is blown. “No problem,” I think, “I have a couple of fuses in my glove box.” WRONG - used them last time.
sigh
Back up to my apartment, change into sneakers and sweats, walk down to the Tom Thumb - I swear the wind changed so that it blew in my face both ways - drop another 10 amp fuse in the box, turn the key------
vrrrRRROOOOMMMMM!!!
YAY!!!
sputter
“Shit.”
Look at the nifty little fuse box I just bought and think, “Well, there’s a 15 amp in here…” and dropped that one in.
vrrrRRROOOOMMMMM!!!
YAY!!!
Turn the car off, run back up to my apartment, call into work and leave a message with the boss, change back into my work clothes, run back down, get in my car, turn the crank…
rrrRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRRR
“Shit.”
Call a tow truck (AAA rocks, and I don’t give a fuck what you think about it), and call up my grandparents to meet me at Mike’s Repair. Tow truck arrives, I catch a ride to the shop, grampa shows up, and I drive the grammamobile to work. I’m training some people at work right now, so of course I arrive late for the first class, am stressed out for the second class, and dead tired for the third class.
Get off work, drive over to gramma’s for supper (well, gramma needs to know the details too, right?), watch the election til about 9:30, and take off in their 1989 Chrysler New Yorker, the kind with all the buttons, and am about a mile from their place when the electronic dash dies. A few seconds later the fan goes out. UH-oh. Make a U-turn and am aalllllmmmoooooosst back to where I started when car quits - on the main drag into town, of course, on the end of a curve, of all places, and of course the hazards go out because the battery is shot.
Knock on a door, borrow a phone, gramma and grampa come out…
Let me stop here for a second and make a long story even longer. I love my grandparents to death. No, really!! But gramma is a worrier, a bad one. And grampa is even WORSE. And he’s FUSSY. And he HATES it when monkey wrenches get thrown. And everything has to be just PERFECT.
Which means that I got to stand in the snow and wind in my work clothes for nearly two hours holding the flashlight while grampa un-installed the dead battery and temporarily installed a boat battery he brought along. THEN I got to go shopping at Wal-Mart with grampa while he bought a new battery. Of course, gramma and grampa are old, and gramma’s a lunch lady in the Sauk Rapids school system, so between the two of them they know EVERYBODY…so there’s another hour gone. Another 45 minutes while grampa installs the new battery.
I’m home now. Home in my very, very, very cold apartment - and why is it cold? Because it was 45 degrees when I left home this morning and I left the window cracked. What’s the temp right now, you ask? I have no fucking clue, but there’s about 3 inches of snow on the ground and the wind was blowing some of it INTO my living room!!
And what do I see on my television? Some snot-nosed punk who claims he’s from Texas has just been elected president.
I’m going to bed now. I really hope that nothing happens to me between my desk and my bed, because if something else goes wrong I will lose my mind.
Good night.
