Randomness ensues

Ah, an enforced day in. It’s raining anyhow, so I don’t mind horribly. I’m forced to stay in because the car finally had to go to the hospital. For four days in a row – the fourth of which was yesterday – I’d tried to make the long trip to Elkin to run errands that can only be run in Elkin, and each day the car sputtered and shook and scared me too much to make the attempt. Finally, yesterday afternoon, I heard it call my name weakly after one, long, shudder and decided to show a little mercy and drive it to the mechanic’s. I like my mechanic. His name is Mark, and he’s very nice. He knows Scott’s out of town, and he told me that if there’s anything he can ever do to help me, to just call him, and he wasn’t being slimy either. He’s just very nice. But when he lifted the hood to make a diagnosis, it was I who pointed out the steam rising up from that kind of black-looking doohickey near the front. The exchange went something like this:

Mark: “Hm, I wonder what’s causing the condensation…”

Me, pointing.

Mark: “Well, look at that,” he said in wonder. “A cracked radiator.”

If I can get Jean to take me over there, I’ll pick the car up later tonight. It’ll be ready around suppertime, Mark says. They call it “suppertime” here in the south. Isn’t that the cutest thing?

Meanwhile, I have a whole long day ahead. Sunday I bit the bullet and painted the first coat of rosy-orange on the last, unpainted wall in the kitchen. If I can hammer out the second coat today, I can finally get the breadmaker, the waffle iron, the crockpot, the big roaster, the cookbooks, and the soup tureen off the dining room table and back where they belong. Currently, the portable dishwasher, the stove, and the refrigerator are standing around awkwardly with their hands in their pockets, blocking the cabinets and drawers and generally making asses of themselves, so I’d like to herd them back against the wall where they belong. Considering our kitchen is about the size of a calendar square, you can imagine how disrupting this two-month long “paint” project has been. It must end here. Today. Just as soon as I’m done writing, and reading, and blogging, and reading your blogs, and commenting, and reading some more, and then having lunch (they call it “dinner” here in the south). Sometime after that.

~

I watched strange movies this weekend. Library movies; you know, the dregs. One was set in Ireland, and featured an all-semi-star cast of American actors playing Irish people, English actors playing Americans, and Joan Plowright. This was very, very confusing to me, but the story was just intriguing enough to keep me watching to find out what happened at the end. I wouldn’t recommend it, though, not in the least. Another one I watched was a subtitled, Spanish film about two lovelorn psychopaths who ended up murdering everyone they met, each more horribly than the last. They ended up dead, shot in the back by a makeshift posse, and left to moulder in a puddle somewhere out in the desert. Trust me, you don’t want to see that one, either. Then I watched Leaving Las Vegas. Do you wonder why I wanted to kill myself on Sunday? (WTET.)

And thus, I leave thee to go a-painting. I’ll see you later, of course. xo