Acting Out

I am not old by today's standards, but there are times when I am stretched about as tight as I can be. Times when the simple stress of every day living becomes a bit wearing.

Both my car and my sister's car are acting up. Whether these are growing pains, or simply some form of automobile acting out I don't know. I do know that my car will go for an indeterminate number of miles and then simply die. Then it does not start up again until the spirit moves it and no amount of praying, begging, or cursing changes that.

My sister's car sounds like a helicopter ready to fall out of the sky and smells like it is burning tires for fuel. Hers won. We took it in for repairs first. That means I have been driving new cars every day so she can do what she needs done and can get to work. I might add that my damaged rotator cuff makes driving any car painful and when the night is dark, the sky is raining and my arm is aching, these trips are a test.

Tonight I used my brother's car. Nothing like a midnight drive through a down pour in the countryside to remind me that I need to check out new cars before I get on the road and realize I do not know where the window buttons are, or the locks when I get into rough parts of other cities. Finally picking up my sister and coming home, I was just about to turn off the highway onto her street when she asked, "Are you taking me home?"

It was as if something suddenly sucked up all the remaining brain space I had left and I could not see the turn lane. For a minute second I was lost and because of this I had to drive down to the next stop light to get to her house.

This would not have happened twenty years ago.