3.21.09
I am not pregnant! Not that I thought that I was or anything. Unless I had done something really bad, it would be rather miraculous for me to be pregnant seeing as I am currently dating someone who does not have boy parts. And I didn’t do anything bad. I’m just trying to keep things in perspective because I had another morning that felt like the universe shitting on me and since getting here it seems that I do is wipe off the universal shit that keeps falling from the sky. As of late I’ve been wondering what role I play in what seems like an unending streak of bad luck. I see myself over and over again acting as though I am the victim of cruel fate, causing me to first get angry and then to shut down. I recognized that I have allowed the negative to take up so much space in my mind that I cannot appreciate the positive but for fleeting moments. I came to that understanding and made a conscious choice to shift my focus and my perspective. And today, keeping life in perspective means thinking about how much deeper trouble I’d be in if somehow I were pregnant.
After weeks of putting it off, I took my car to Alex Safety Lane today to find out what the clunking, rattling, shimmying and shaking going on in the front end of my car is all about. Pep Boys said the sway bar is broken and then never called me back after they said they’d find the part. It was suggested to me to go elsewhere. So I dragged myself out of bed, took a shower, got all of my work stuff together, got directions and headed out. The people at Alex Safety Lane were very friendly as I explained what was going on. I gave them my keys and they offered me a ride if I needed one since it would be a few hours before I could get my car back. It’s the first day of spring and Santa Fe is sunny and warm today, so I declined and headed out for a walk.
After about forty minutes of walking and exploring a different area of Santa Fe that I’d never really explore before, I headed to Whole Foods for some coffee. I’ve been feeling under the weather this week - sore throat, head ache, tightness in my chest - and whether I’m sick or have some sort of allergies, I was totally out of it by the time I got to Whole Foods. For at least ten or fifteen minutes I wandered around trying to decide what to get for breakfast. I looked at one juice, compared it to another, wandered to a different section, went back to the first juice and wandered around some more. I finally got a juice that supposedly has like five hundred million times the vitamin C of any other anything on the planet - I wanted something cold and it seemed that vitamin C might be helpful with whatever it is that is ailing me. I bought it, sat down, finished it in less than a minute and decided to go look for some food either for breakfast or to buy for lunch later.
Around and around I went again. I settled on coffee to give me more time to decide what food I wanted. I got my cup, grabbed a copy of the latest Santa Fe Reporter and tried to slowly sip my coffee while reading the paper cover to cover. Still no word about my car, so I headed back to the isles and wandered some more. I found a can of soup that looked good and cheap. As I headed to the check out, I got distracted in the whole body section and ended up sitting on the floor next to the flower essences, reading a very large book that listed all sorts of ailments and what flower essences to take to relieve them. Adi and I just had a discussion about flower essences recently, so it seemed quite pertinent and was actually quite interesting. A woman working in the whole body section came over and offered me a little cushion thing to sit on. Then my phone rang.
The estimate they gave me on the phone was about $600. They say when it rains it pours. I live in the desert. It doesn’t matter. All I could think as I walked from Whole Foods back to pick up my car was “I just spent basically an entire pay check on a new laptop because mine got stolen. Today is pay day and there goes that pay check. When does it end? When can my pay check just pay for my living expenses and then go into my savings? What else could possibly come my way?” I wavered between angry, indignant, sad, resigned and eventually tried for some sense of calm, for some type of rationality. At the garage they printed a cost summary sheet with a balance of $507, as I paid a $100 deposit on the spot. When I sat down at my desk when I finally got to work, I realized that the parts were not listed on the sheet, so I called and discovered that in fact the total will be $715, so at this point I owe $615.
So here I am. I talked to my dad about it who said, “are you looking for help?” I thought about it for a second and said no. I don’t want help. Well, actually I don’t need help. I have a full time job and do have some money in the bank. These repairs will not break me. They are much less than it would cost to get a new car and in order for me to get to work and to live, as much as I absolutely hate it, I currently depend on my Daewoo. I think I just needed to complain about how much it sucks to be an adult. I just needed to be reminded that this is not the universe trying to make my life miserable, it’s just how things go. And it’s ok for me to feel upset and angry and frustrated about it. But it’s not just me. A little later on I talked to my brother. He talked a lot about the mechanics of it all. He mentioned how much money he used to spend on repairs for his Land Rover. A little later later on I talked to my sister-in-law. She offered empathy in a way that was comforting and called me yet again back to the idea that this type of thing happens to everyone. It just does.
And I am not pregnant. I just have me to pay for. I’d like to be able to be saving more money than I currently am, but I have a home, I have a job, I have food, and I have people who I care about and who care about me. Once I get my car fixed, it’ll feel like a new car. When I got in it at the garage to drive out to work, I took a deep breath, petted the steering wheel and told the Daewoo how I love her and understand that she’s getting old and has been good to me. It’s important to take care of the people and also the things that we love, value, and need and sometimes taking care means spending money. Et voila.
