You all know the saying (or the many variations): Some days you’re the dog and some days you’re the hydrant (pigeon/car, bug/windshield). I think of it as some days it’s two steps forward and one step back, and others it’s one step forward and two steps back.
This was a long weekend and not in a good way. Definitely two steps back. Though Mike managed to install both garage door openers (another exhausting marathon) and I did some much-needed yard clean-up, that progress was marred by one person’s thoughtlessness. We came home from dinner on Saturday night only to find someone had done a hit-and-run number on Mike’s car, parked on the street in front of our house. Driver’s side door and fender, dent and scrape — not huge, but probably $1000 in damage, as these things go.
Splat. So much for killing ourselves to do so many house projects on our own to save money. So much for paying off and keeping our cars to save money. Yes, we have insurance (high deductible of course to save money), but as “luck” would have it, we’re in the process of switching insurance companies, again a money-saving measure offered by our agent. So, do you even want to make a claim against a new policy? Doesn’t that tend to make your rates go up (likely negating our newfound savings)?
It was no “I didn’t know I hit anything” accident. Someone out there knows what he/she did. When this “person” (in lieu of the noun I’d rather use) gives thanks on Thursday, I hope a flicker of guilt casts its shadow. But I doubt it will. The whole thing was probably forgotten by the time he was a half-mile down the road. No worries, no responsibility. Someone else will pick up the pieces and make it right.
I better go. I seem to be slipping farther away from the keyboard.
A door opens to me.
I go in and am faced with a hundred closed doors.
~ Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943
translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Before
New floor in process
New door going up
Voila!
New pier in process
Voila!
New floor in process
Writing by Ear 