Soon, You're Just Going to Think I'm a Wild Animal

Ok, so the heat still isn't fixed. The poor repairmen have been trying all week, which I guess is what you get for living in a 95 year old house. When we first moved in, the stove was broken and it took almost 2 months for anyone to figure out how to fix it.

Oh, my wonderous landlord, though you deal with my issues promptly and thoroughly, if you sold me this house these things would be my problems.

See, despite the seeming 2 weeks it takes to fix anything around here, I love this house with a fiery passion. To me, this house just speaks my name. But sometimes it tries my patience, none the less. Last night, while waiting for Jennifer to come over for dinner (and oh, we'd bought beads and mod podge and all our spring seeds to start in trays! I'll blog about that tomorrow) Thomas tried to plug in one of the space heaters left for us by the repairmen and we blew a fuse.

And in our house, that's literal. Thomas was driving all the way across town to buy a fuse while I searched the house with a flashlight for a phone that wasn't cordless so I could call my guests and tell them to wait.

In slightly unrelated news, I seem to be developing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in my left hand. Having it is sort of like have allergies for the first time. I used to disdain allergies and consider them to be wussie. Now I feel the pain.
Quite literally.

And so, it seems as if everything around me is just slowly disintigrating. First my ovary and now my left hand. The heat and then the power. DAMMIT!

It all reminded me of the house we lived in before we moved here. The city line running into that house often got blocked--it wasn't our fault, there was just something wrong with it--so periodically we'd have to call out the city to dig out the pipe and leave raw sewage in our yard to deal with. YAY! One day that happened on our birthdays! And we were giving a party! In the backyard!

But I digress.

We got used to that situation and began to be able to sense it coming and call the city before the sinks stopped draining and the toilets stopped flushing. But one Friday at 5 o'clock it caught us completely off guard. There was nothing to be done; the city was closed. So we went to our friends' houses and to the bar a lot so as to be in proximity to bathrooms while we waited for Monday to arrive. But at night, right before we went to bed...

all four Gilberts: Thomas, Meg, Gertie and Gonzo, would go outside to pee.

Status: Ovary OK

So this week was mostly spent in contemplation of my left ovary, which did NOT feel good. Mostly, I feel you should not even notice that you have ovaries.

Of course, the ovary stopped hurting two days before my doctor's appointment, which made me feel like a car that obstinately refuses to start until it is towed to the mechanic's.

The doctor (and please, whoever is in charge of blessing, bless Planned Parenthood, for they are the harbingers of all that is good in the world) says I'm fine. The pain and weirdness exactly corresponded with my ovulation this month, so she says it's just some random weirdness.

And so now I'm free to think and blog about things besides my left ovary. I'm sure my male readers are pleased to hear that.

So, comparing myself to a car made me realize that I've never blogged about good old Christine, my car of yore, who is now driven by my fine friend, Katie.

Christine was a 95 Saturn SC2 and so named because she turned on by herself. No kidding. No one around her, no remote entry or ignition, nothing. Just sometimes you'd come out and the car would be locked and running.

The first time it happened, I was so baffled that I actually thought I might have somehow been so absent minded that I left the car running when I went into TJMaxx. Then I realized that if that were true, the keys wouldn't have been in my hand, they'd have been in the ignition.

The best, or at least most dramatic, of the times that Christine christined, was, in fact, the only time she did it in front of other people (pretty much all of whom thought I was crazy). It was late and Thomas, Mary and I were coming home from Lula's in a cab. We pulled up in front of the house, and my car was turning on and off, flashing her lights, locking and unlocking the doors, her windows were going up and down and the windshield wipers were going. "Look at that!" we were all screaming. Thomas went to touch the car and I was like, "NOOOOOOO!"

I think I seriously thought it would eat him.

I always wanted to call Click and Clack about it, but figured that either no one would believe me, or there would be a perfectly simple explanation and I would prefer to believe that my car was possessed by the devil.

The only other really bizarre thing that she did (and really, she was a wonderful, reliable, long suffering car) was that once, for a two week period of time, she would only turn on once a day. And once was a hard and fast rule. You could go as far as you wanted once the car was on, but once it was off it would not turn on again until tomorrow.

I drove it to the mechanic's and parked outside and went in to tell my tale of woe. The mechanics all laughed at me. This stupid girl, you could hear them thinking. "Fine," I said, "Laugh. And then go try to move my car into the bay."

They came back. One looked at me, almost angrily. "Your car won't start," he said.

"I know," I said. "Try again tomorrow."

To be fair, they could have totally hosed me. They could have said ANYTHING and I would have believed them, because their initial assessment was right, when it comes to the car, I AM a stupid girl. But it turned out that it was just the sensor that tells when the car is overheating. The sensor was broken and it wouldn't let the car turn on because every time the car was driven, it thought it was overheating. Hughs Brothers only charged me $75.

Sensor shmensor. That car was possessed by the devil.