wrenchette

December 15, 2001

Today's Reading
The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes by Peter Mathiessen

This Year's Reading
2001 Book List

The garbage disposal jammed again. I'm missing another coffee measure spoon too. Coincidence? I don't think so. I'm on my knees sticking my head under the sink in search of the self-service wrenchette that came with the disposal when the phone rings. It's Thomas with a tree-related crisis. Suffice it to say that this tree does not belong in any living room. I don't think I can even put it in a tree museum and "charge all the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em". I tell him about the wrenchette - honest, it says "self-service wrenchette" right on it - and give my paltry advice regarding the tree (put it in the hallway or something). I resume looking for the wrenchette.

Cut to later that same evening. Having found the wrenchette I am lying on my back on the floor with my head and upper torso under the sink trying to get maximum leverage. I turn the garbage disposal maybe half a turn when the phone rings again. Thomas reveals he is my Secret Santa and wants to know what I want. Hmm. I don't think this is how you play Secret Santa. Isn't it supposed to be secret? I tell him I long for a heated ice scraper that plugs into the cigarette lighter of the car. I hang up and go back to the wrenchette wishing I'd thought to ask for a new garbage disposal.

The garbage disposal finally moves all the way around so I figure I've dislodged the coffee measure, if that is indeed the foreign object jamming it. I feel around but find nothing except mushroom gravy. Darn, I wish I'd worn gloves. I wash my hands of the slimy mushroom gravy, which is beginning to smell like lake water during an algae bloom. I press the button on the bottom of the disposal to give the motor the all-clear and turn on the wall switch. Whirr, whirr, crunch. It stops.

Many wrenchette rounds later it still goes "whirr, whirr, crunch" when I turn it on. I go to bed with visions of appliance repair men dancing in my head. And there was evening and morning the first day. Yup, this was only Monday.

Tuesday, secure in the knowledge that I'd canceled my therapy appointment so I could get to the Purrfect Companions meeting at the cat shelter I'm driving north on 495 feeling like so OK my life isn't totally out of control, I'm managing my schedule despite conflicts and the garbage disposal really doesn't matter that much now that the sink at least drains and I've cleaned out the mushroom gravy. Somewhere around Rt. 3 the traffic slows to a crawl. Despite leaving work way way way early, I end up being late. Sigh.

Seamus, whose being returned I mentioned in Saturday's entry, has been adopted again already. Smokey is being all nice and lovey tonight hanging around while we have our meeting. I'd love to hang around the cats some more but I missed dinner thanks to being stuck in traffic and am now starving.

By the time I consume an Angelina's veggie sub and drive home it's after 9:00PM. I have a phone message from my therapist wanting to know where I am and could I please call to let her know I'm all right. Oops. I swear I canceled the appointment. There's another message requesting homework help about favorite foods of the world, and one about whether there are reindeer in Iceland (there aren't) and other stuff. I never get this many messages. I phone my therapist's voice mail and leave a message saying I thought I canceled and of course I'm all right then tackle the homework issue, which it turns out since I failed to call back by bedtime has been handled via the Internet - probably a better source than the mind of AJ if I am indeed so deep in dementia that I only imagine I canceled my therapy appointment. My life has become unmanageable.

In the morning I get to work and discover that Outlook/Exchange, the evilest piece of software ever devised by Meecrosoft, has swallowed the rescheduling of my boss's staff meeting from 10:00 to 9:00. As it is now 9:30 and at least one other person on staff also comes in at 9:30, staff meeting has been re-rescheduled to 3:30-4:30. And uh-oh, I have an MRFRS executive committee meeting tonight at 6:00 in Newburyport. If the traffic is anything like last night I should leave at 4:00, which of course won't work. My life has become unmanageable.

Miraculously, although I leave at 4:30 I arrive in Newburyport with like 15 minutes to spare before the meeting. I totally miss the humungous traffic jam caused by a cement truck doing something nasty on 495. If I'd left just 5 or 10 minutes later, I'd be stuck on 495 now instead of in Fowle's buying coffee before the meeting.

Fowle's, where the guy who wears the Gumby for President button is telling the coffee purchaser in line ahead of me that "it will still be the same coffee sent in from Ipswich to Middle Street Foods". What the heck is he talking about? I order my coffee then ask him what's going on. The place is being turned into some kind of yuppie (are there still yuppies?) bakery and the coffee roasting business is moving to Ipswich and the retail coffee operation to Middle Street Foods. None of this has been announced yet.

I'm like a cat. I hate change. Especially change that takes Newburyport in the direction of becoming a theme park and less like real place where real people have real lives. I whine about his endlessly on the phone to Nancy when I get home from the executive committee meeting. I mean I'm still in mourning for Olde Port Book Shop, I don't know if I can take Fowle's moving too.

I almost forget to tell Nancy that I found out the reason Seamus got returned is he ate through 6 phone cords and a door. A door? I thought only dogs chewed through doors. And weren't phone cords not supposed to be as tasty to cats as they used to be? Sounds like Seamus became unmanageable too.

So, by Thursday night's meeting, I have no trouble admitting my life has become unmanageable. My life has become unmanageable due to Meecrosft Outlook/Exchange and gentrification. I don't think there are meetings for that.

Late breaking news: my therapist called back and said that I had, in fact, canceled my appointment. I guess I am slightly less demented and my life slightly less unmanageable. Now to see if I have any more luck with that wrenchette on the darn garbage disposal.

But tonight: Tonight is Tuba Christmas: 70-odd instruments of the low brass persuasion blasting Christmas music into my bones in Wickford, the town where Nancy and I first discovered the magic of tubas. In a world with tubas in it, unmanageable software and wrenchettes just don't matter.