You Have To Laugh!!!

I've been losing my mind lately. 

The papers have been stacking up.  The student demands have been greater.  My family has been sick.  My time is not my own.  With all of this in mind, I was looking forward to heading off to the coast this last weekend to the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival.  On the way to Forest Grove to teach my class on Friday, the Jeep's check engine light went on and the car started lurching terribly.

Tracy and I turned around and headed back to her car.  We switched out all the luggage and took off again.  I was forced to cancel my class because of this.  The weekend was great.  We drank wine, talked with friends, ate great seafood, and had a wonderful trip.  Upon returning home, Tracy and I limped the Jeep back to our house and set about using the truck, the back up rig.  Not twenty minutes into driving that car, the check engine light comes on.  Wunderbar!  I'm two for two in the span of three days.  I'm keeping my cool, trying not to get to angry about the situation, and I think I'm doing all right.

We park the truck at Tracy's parents house so they can get it to a mechanic for us.  Thanks Tom and Betty!  We have a third car I can use at home.  It is my 1978 Volkswagen Westfalia bus.  I love it.  It's my baby.  When I try and start it, dead...nothing.  I jumpstart it and drive up to Tom and Betty's, again, to borrow the battery charger. 

On the way home from their house, battery charger tucked gently into the passenger seat of the bus, I stall the bus at a busy intersection.  It's pouring down rain outside.  The car won't restart.  I'm holding up traffic as the light turns from red to green.  I'm stuck at the junction of Sunnyside Road and Sunnybrook Road trying to turn left. 

When I try to turn on the car, there is nothing.  No lights, no buzzing, no clicking, nothing.  I jump out of the car and open the engine hatch.  Somehow in the use of jumper cables, I've loosened the connection on the negative post of the car engine's battery.  I reconnect the connection and try to start the car.  Nothing. 

The light has gone through three sequences by this point.  I'm lucky that its late at night and I'm able to wave the few people driving around me.  I'm dialing AAA when a nice couple stops and asks if they can help me.  I tell them I simply need a jump.  The agree and I've got the bus started in the space of two minutes.  I tell them I'm on my way home from picking up a battery charger and we all laugh.  "Ah, the irony," the young man says.

When I get back in the bus, I roll the window back up.  I'd been shouting back to the young man and had rolled it down to communicate.  The moment the window touches the top of the door frame, the handle breaks off in my hand.  I'm grateful the window is closed but I sigh and wonder what I've done to anger the universe.

It's a minor breakdown, nothing I can't handle.  Besides, the car is running and I'm on my way home.  I pull into the garage and am grateful to be there.  In an older Volkswagen, the seat belts don't retract.  They hang up on hooks connected to the interior of the car.  I take off my seat belt and go to hang it on the hook.  The damn thing falls off in my hand. 

I laugh.  I laugh and I laugh and I laugh.  I can't help myself.  I don't know what to make of all this.  It feels like too much at once.  It is too much at once.  It's beyond coincidence.  I know repairs are going to cost me a pretty penny, but I don't think I give a damn.  It reminded me to laugh and I'm taking that lesson and putting it to good use all week.