Missed It By That Much!

What a day!  All I know is that it was a Friday, and TGIF notwithstanding, this particular Friday didn’t start out so well.

I crawled out of bed at 5 a.m. and got ready for my mountain hike. Got my boots all laced up and discovered that I had left my car keys in the bedroom. Not wanting to walk across the rug with dirty boots, I unlaced them, took them off and went for the keys. Returning to the mudroom, I laced up the left boot and then promptly broke the shoelace on the right boot. Luckily, I had a spare lace, but those of you hikers out there can commiserate with me over the joys of re-lacing boots…especially early in the morning.

Finally, I got into the car, fastened my seat belt, backed out of the garage and promptly knocked over my garbage can. Got out of the car, picked up the can (as well as scattered chicken bones) and finally took off for the mountains. It started to sprinkle. I told myself, “It’s not Monsoon Season yet. Must be a flock of birds.” It rained just enough to turn the dust on my car into a thin coating of mud.

When I got home, my neighbor informed me that I had a big irrigation leak at the side of my house. I turned off the water valve, and on my way into the house to call the irrigation Guru; I noticed two flyers at my front door. One was a love letter from the Water Company: “A backflow is broken in your neighborhood and the water will be turned off for 3 hours until noon.” This meant that the irrigation guy couldn’t come until after noon, because he couldn’t test the water leak at my house, since there wouldn’t be any water.  The second love letter was from the Gas Company: “The gas line in your neighborhood doesn’t have enough rotten egg smell to detect a gas leak, so be careful until we can add more rotten egg smell.”

So far, I had broken my shoelace, knocked over the garbage can, got rained on by a flock of birds, discovered a water leak, and my rotten egg smell wasn’t rotten enough, and it was only 8 a.m.

What else could go wrong?

At 9 a.m. the phone rang and my caller ID let me know that it was a friend.  I picked up the phone, said, “Well, Good Morning!” but she wasn’t on the other line. After several attempts to call her back, I finally got through on my cell phone. It turned out that a problem had developed with Century Link (her phone provider), Comcast (my phone provider) and Verizon (just because they didn’t want to miss the fun.)

At noon, the Water Company turned the community water back on. I flushed the toilet and the air in the line blew the rubber tube right off the gizmo in the toilet tank. That was uncanny!

The irrigation leak was fixed and all was finally well with my Friday. Then the mail arrived.

General Motors congratulated me that I had gotten my recalled ignition replaced, but informed me that now there is a teeny, weensy problem with the electrical power steering which will be replaced as soon as the parts arrive from Timbuktu. In the off chance that I experience a sudden loss of power steering, I was informed that “a message will be displayed on the Driver Information Center along with a chime telling you that you can now steer in the manual steering mode.” Well, I can do that!

So, do any of you superstitious folks think that my Friday was Friday the 13^th? I’m not telling! 

Esther Blumenfeld (Forgot to tell you, the battery in my watch died.)