So I’m minding my own business during my last conference call of the day, in the early afternoon. My cell phone rings, and I don’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. When I listen to the message, it was the school.

“OK, so John’s in trouble again,” I assumed. That can wait until the end of my meeting.

Then the ex rings, so I mute the call and answer it. It seems that John’s not in trouble in the traditional sense, but in an ambulance at the front of the school; no more details are available.

Well, if that doesn’t stop your heart, I don’t know what will.

So I interrupted the meeting, said I had a kid in an ambulance and had to go, hung up on them, and took out from that office like my tail was on fire and my ass was catching. I’m sure Marv wondered what the hell was up with me, but I didn’t stop to explain. I jumped into that little piece of shit car and zoomed my way down to the hospital in record time. Turns out that little thing has more zip to it than I’d thought.

I met my ex in the parking lot, but no ambulance. They hadn’t left the school yet, and if either of us had known that, we’d have gone there instead of to the next town south, to the only hospital in the county. But he’d heard a little more about it, so breathing was now possible.

Seems that John was running on the playground and tripped and smashed his scalp open on a fence. Blood everywhere, and of course this wasn’t the school nurse’s day on campus, so an ambulance was called. The vice principal met us there too.

Finally, he got there, all strapped to a backboard. He’d hit his head, after all, although he hadn’t been knocked out. Split his scalp wide open—I accidentally got a look and then felt woozy and had to sit down.

He was a trooper, mostly worried about the blood on his clothes. And there was a lot of blood. He said he didn’t know he’d cut himself until it started bleeding. They took a cat scan of his head to make sure there wasn’t a more serious injury, then cleaned him up. Five staples and four hours later, and we were on our way. He gets to stay home from school tomorrow, but mostly because the bandage has to stay on and he can’t wash the blood out of his hair, and who wants to go to school like that?

Poor kid!

This was all after I found out what was wrong with my truck, bringing it from yet another mystery problem (bad) to something repairable (good) but at the tune of $1700 (bad!) It was the intercooler tanks, which have something to do with air injection. The seals both broke loose; I could replace them with stock parts, but I’d just go through this again, so I opted to beef it up a little. I try to do that every time I can with this truck. And, of course, it’s a common enough problem that the distributor doesn’t have the parts in stock until Tuesday. But they put it back together for me so I can run it around town.

I was going to turn the rental back in, but the excitement at the hospital postponed that until tomorrow. And this puts back my gauge installation, which may have prevented the problem in the first place (I could have seen what was going on and backed off the power to save it) but one issue at a time, man.

Fabulous week I’m having, no?

My poor, sweet baby isn’t feeling too well…. er, my truck’s done broke.

It has been getting worse and worse over the last couple of weeks, and as of Friday night, it had all of the get up and go of a 90-year-old lady on a walker. On ice. With a broken hip. The check engine light had finally come on (I seem to have a love-hate relationship with Dodges and check engine lights) so now it’s possible to diagnose that puppy, I hope.

When I was getting nervous about it, I set up an appointment with the racing truck kid. I figured that while I was there, I’d get those guages put in that I really need. But on reconsideration (and a poke in the ass from Murphy), I just took it over to my mechanic this morning. It might be a regular problem, not an aftermarket-parts issue, and even if it is, this is the guy who put those parts on.

So Marv drove over with me and brought me home, and I stopped to rent a car.

A small car, since I’m paying for it out of my very own pocket and I’m fundamentally cheap.

This model comes equipped standard with fourteen clowns and a dancing poodle in a tutu, but the tootely horn honking was getting distracting and I kept getting thwacked in the head with big floppy shoes, so I pulled over and let them out. Took fifteen minutes, and I’m pretty sure there’s still a red rubber nose rolling around on the back floorboards.

I tell you what, driving any kind of car is always a little startling for me, but this one is even smaller than usual. I’m real up close and personal with the roadkill, if you know what I mean (and I think you do.) Man, that skunk needed a toenail trim. I was sitting at a stoplight next to a truck much like mine, and realized that my head was below that driver’s ass. I can see the undercarriage of a Ford Focus. But I’ll be safe if I happen to get in a wreck with a big rig; I’ll slip right under, won’t even mess up my hair.

The whole office is giggling at my tiny car. Ralph made an illustration. Note the knees up beneath my chin, which is a life-like depiction (the hair, not so much.) I’m an average-sized woman, and I’m uncomfortably crammed in this wee beastie.

::postus interruptus::

Aaaannd, I’m back. While I was writing, the mechanic called. Seems that my truck is too new for his computer to work, so he couldn’t pull the code to find out what exactly was wrong with it. And Dodge won’t sell the new computers, preferring to hog all of the repair work to themselves. So I went to pick it up, trading in the clown car, which will hang out in their shop tonight. Tomorrow morning, it’s off to the stealership, where I’ll pay them to pull the code and diagnose it, but not to actually touch anything. They don’t do a very good job and they charge way too much. Then it’s back out to Newman to play musical vehicles again and hope that my mechanic can get it fixed before I have to pay for another day on the rental.

But just to cap off my day, I stopped in at Marci’s to say hello while I was there. I zipped off when we’d chatted for a while (like we don’t talk all day long.) Got into my driveway, which happens to be 45 minutes away, and noticed that I had no purse. Guess where that was? And no, I couldn’t just get it tomorrow; not if I’m going to pay the stealership. So back out to Newman I went, in a truck that’s living on borrowed time. I passed that skunk six times today (he’s starting to ooze) and I get to do it two more times tomorrow and then whenever I get to pick it up.

I feel like one of those slidey puzzles, with pieces negotiating truck and fixed points like meetings at work. I can only hope that the picture at the end is of me with a hot-rod pickup, and not something completely pointless, like puppies in a shoe. If that’s the case, I’m trading it all in on a Harley and running away from home.

Last night, I up and took myself across the pass to my old, old stomping grounds. I went to see this group: Magic Moments,a 50s band, at a Concert in the Park in Pleasanton. 

It was a fabulous time; the band was excellent, the weather was perfect, and the venue was fantastic. People were picnicking in the grass and the front of the bandstand was filled with dancers, from the barely-walking, bobbing up and down stage, to people who’d been teenagers when this music first hit the airwaves and who really knew how to get down. People-watching was great, and the whole mood of the crowd was very upbeat and relaxed.

But what I was really there for was to see an old friend from High School and to meet his lovely wife. I hadn’t seen Bruce in 20 years, but when someone else in my class started up a website to prepare for our 20-year reunion, a fondly-remembered guy who happened to have been Bruce’s family’s exchange student showed up, and I started corresponding with him. I’d lost track of Bruce about ten years prior to that, but Ghigo got us all back together via email. It was pretty nice to catch up that way, but actually seeing him was a real kick in the pants.

Bruce and his wife Alyce had invited me out to see him play, and I was feeling just the tiniest bit nervous. As soon as I saw him though, that all disappeared. As bad as I am with faces, I would have recognized him instantly on the street, even out of context. It was great to see him, and his mom was there too, so I got to catch up with her a little. She was one of the alternate moms of the group; you know the kind, who’s always got a herd of kids who aren’t her own trooping through her house and is perfectly fine with it.

Bruce was an important part of my life when I was young. He was the first in a life-long series of platonic male friends that have left their marks on me. To this day, most of my close friends are men, but he was the first. We did a lot of hanging out and driving around in our old not-quite hot rods. Bruce was the cool guy (for band!) and looking back, I suppose I must have looked like a puppy following him around at times. He’s the one who got me playing the saxophone, although I don’t think he had anything to do wiht it consciously. No, I just thought he was cool and wanted to be more like him. Never mind that I’d only been playing an instrument for a year or two compared to the rest of the band’s five years or more. Never mind that I never quite learned how to read music, had no formal background to fall back to, and am to this day sort of tone deaf and definitely somewhat rhythm-impaired. No, the sax was the cool thing to do, so I stubborned it out and faked it a lot. I was so bad at it!

Bruce, however, was very good, and is even better today. The man seems to be able to play anything; at the concert, he was also playing the keyboard, which Alyce told me he’d just picked up, and singing while he did it! Man, I was always lucky to be able to continue to breathe while I played anything.

I loved Alyce too, and I can see why Bruce does. It was a nice change for someone like me, who’s mostly surrounded by single people or the unhappily married, to see a couple that’s been married longer than any of my relationships lasted but are still so clearly in love and so well suited for each other. It’s things like that that knock me up side my cynical old head sometimes and remind me that love does exist, and can be done right.

So here’s to old friends and new, and thank you both!

We all converged yesterday on the Bay Area church where Grampa used to sing in the choir. It was just family; my sister flew in from Colorado, but couldn’t bring her herd. It was pretty nice—we popped him in a box in a memorial wall outside in a garden, the minister said a few words, and then we went to lunch.

Which was the problem. My jackass of an uncle (and I’ve historically been the one who gets along with him the best) decided to take us all to some cafe run by a friend of his, so we convoyed. The man clearly has no idea how to lead people, as he lost both me and my dad several times, including making my dad get on the freeway and making me take a quick detour on the wrong way of the road once. Y’know, if he’d just bothered to look in his mirror or wait for us, it would have been fine.

Finally, after passing several perfectly good restaurants, he whips a U-turn unexpectedly and parks in the only spot available on the street in front of a tiny strip mall, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fit his truck in the parking lot. His truck which is smaller than mine. Dad and I circled that lot futilely, ran up two different roads looking for street parking, and couldn’t even find anything small enough for Dad’s car. I lost Dad, and was starting to get really ticked. Who picks a restaurant knowing that there’s nowhere to park? So I went in, told them (who were already sitting perusing menus!) that there was nowhere for me and that I was going to have to leave.

This of course upset my mom, who tried to tell me to let jackass park my truck. Since jackass’ helpful suggestions included either hanging my ass end four feet out into the street and having to climb out the back window in a dress or parking illegally, there was no way I was going to let him anywhere near my truck. Besides, what exactly qualifies him to park it, when I’m the one who knows what size it is?

I wasn’t willing to let my gramma down, so I went out and tried again, and finally parked illegally in some other restaurant’s lot nowhere near the stupid cafe. I figured I’d forward jackass the parking ticket. Turns out, that was the only place Dad could find too. He’d missed my pissed-off scene in the restaurant, so the women sent him out to calm me down while I hiked over in heels. Probably, they wanted to calm him down too; Dad doesn’t show it, but he likes Uncle Jackass even less than I do. Dad agreed with me, but said just to fake it for Gramma, so that’s what we both did.

And after all of that, we had to listen to the blowhard for an hour, including his cell phone conversation. Pardon me, but I left mine off for a funeral service, and I’m higher on my relative food chain than he is. He’s a damn tractor salesman. Color me unimpressed. And the food? Terrible.

But Mom said on the phone later when I apologized for making a scene that Gramma wasn’t offended, and in fact, was ready to get up and leave with me so we could all eat together. Grampa would have been right there with me; he didn’t think much of the jackass either. Grampa always backed me up, and he would have loved the red hair, up to and including the personality that goes with it.

It may just be that I’m getting old, but I’m coming to the conclusion that camping for the sake of camping really isn’t all that much fun. Camping with a purpose (hunting, quads, drinking with the girls, rodeoing) is great, and I’ve done so much of it in the last ten years that it may have masked my dislike of the pure camping experience. It’s not good of a time with just the three of us; kind of dirty, hot, and boring.

We did all of the right things:

We got in before dark, set up camp, and ate hot dogs and junk food.

We went for walks, including to an Indian grinding rock where we saw a wild turkey.

We looked at animal tracks, and found clear sign of a small bear in the vicinity.

We took a drive, looked at the old log cabin (which falls down further every year) and did a little four-wheeling.

We played in the creek, doing a little gold panning, some dam building, and lots of rock splunking.

We shot the BB gun until it broke (I’d forgotten the pellets to the air rifle.)

And by shortly after lunch, I was completely tired of the “We’re bored” whining going on, mostly emanating from John. Seamus would have been happy to play with Hot Wheels in the dirt or go make boats to float down the creek, but without someone to play with, he didn’t want to. And John didn’t want to do anything fun at all, not even learn to drive. He was ticked because none of his friends went, and I wasn’t willing to let them go exploring too far out of my sight with people sighting in rifles somewhere in the valley.

So we packed up and came home, almost exactly 24 hours after we’d left. Seamus still got his bit of camping, and I got a shower. Since they couldn’t stir themselves to do anything interesting, they can go watch TV until their brains rot, for all I care. I was doing very well not to bite John’s head off by the time we left; he was pushing every single button I have. Fun; the kid that I don’t mesh with wonderfully is well on his way to becoming a surly teenager.

No, I haven’t heard from him, but I didn’t really expect to. I’m trying to keep myself pessimistic about the whole thing, but I’ll call him next week to see about that concert. I have a feeling that the timing isn’t right, for him at least. And if he doesn’t want to date again, then I’ll just go on living my life as I’ve been doing for the past year and a half. I’ll date once in a while and I’ll do what I want to do with who I want, and when I want. If I find someone to truly take my heart away from him, that’s just gravy.

But meanwhile, I’m taking the kids on the camping trip I’d promised them. School starts so early that it cuts the summer off short, but we’re going anyway. Everyone flaked last weekend, so there was no reason to juggle schedules after all (lucky for me that I changed that.) It’s just going to be me and the boys; I’ll pick them up after school and head for the hills. They can fart around with their bikes and play in the creek, and I will sit in the shade and read my book.

I’d hoped to bring up an assortment of firearms, since I’m participating in a postal match on my board. That’s where everyone shoots at their own home range and then sends the targets in to be scored. I’m doing the scoring. But I looked and looked for anything approximating the target we’d chosen, and can’t find it locally anywhere, so I had to order it off the internet, which means that it won’t be here in time for shooting tomorrow. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard to find a 100-yard rifle target, but you’d be wrong. Giant man-sized targets, targets shaped like running rabbits, little and big stick-ums to put on whatever you’re plinking at, sure, but nothing for serious shooting. I wish I’d looked earlier and had ordered them earlier, but there you go. I’ll just go up by myself next weekend; I will bring the pellet and BB guns for the kids to plink with on this trip at least, but neither of those freak the dog out.

Dennis called up the other night hoping that I would expedite the borrowing of the sound system from Mike, who he doesn’t know, to run for a gig for April (her band quit, and the venue that booked her didn’t know that.)

I figured, hell, it’s just playing a CD, right? I should be able to do this, and I’m not doing anything else that night. Besides, it gets me back in DP, at a small street fair, and I really like that town.

So I borrowed Jeff’s system from Mike, and he was kind enough to come over on Friday and run me through setting it up.

On Saturday, I hauled it on out, and made Dennis do the heavy lifting. A bellydancing group that was on before April hadn’t brought any equipment of their own for some reason, but it was no skin off my nose if they used it. And it all worked and sounded fine. Well, fine for Turkish music in a redneck setting, but the raised eyebrows had nothing at all to do with the sound system.

So when April was up, we thought we were golden. The mics were good, and the music was playing, but I just could not get the volume of the music up to a level that more than the first three rows could really hear it. April’s Dad checked it out for us, and I called both Mike and Jeff.

Fortunately, there was a DJ scheduled behind April, and he graciously let me use his mixer. He even ran it for the first set, but it was pretty simple, so he turned it over to me for the next two.

I really enjoyed myself; turns out that I know all the words to all sorts of songs. The other DJ was teasing me about putting a third mic out there for me, and when I told him of my tune-carrying ineptitude, he said that I was actually doing OK. I’m thinking that it was just really loud where he was standing. I had my fun running the technical stuff, dancing along (sorta) to April and Misty, and relearning that I’m now a lightweight in the alcohol department. I didn’t drive home though; I only drove to Cowboy’s.

I know, I know, I’m a slacker. But really, there’s nothing going on worth writing about, not even mundane but funny stories.

Do expect one about being a roadie on Sunday though.

When Dennis called and asked, “Whatcha doing?” I knew it was the tone that meant, “I have something interesting to do, do you want to come?” rather than the, “Hi, how are you?” tone. You know your friends this long, and you can tell.

It seems that the Turlock rodeo was last night, and Chris was roping in the performance and Dennis’ girlfriend was out of town, and would I like to go watch?

Well, sure!

I left John at home to practice being a surly teenager and dragged Seamus with me. Cowboy thought Seamus was John, he’s grown so tall. We hung out with the guys at the trailers for a while, which was a taste of old home week. Man, I miss that scene.

Cowboy’s got a new heeler, who seems to also be an actor in a famous HBO series that involves a lot of bad language, and he had good stories. But at one point, he turned to look at me and asked, “So, you guys were almost married?”

I choked, but didn’t deny it, quite. Cowboy’s and my eyes snapped straight to each other, and I said, “What makes you say that?” Which is not a denial, you’ll note, and I believe that we were, but who knows what Cowboy’s opinion on the whole thing was? He didn’t deny it either though, I noticed, but we both let the conversation move on. Interesting.

Finally, it was rodeo time, so Seamus and Dennis and I went up to the stands while Cowboy stayed behind the chute holding Chris’ heeling horse while he calf roped. Every once in a while, our eyes would meet and we would both smile at each other, and after Chris was done with both events, he handed the extra horse off to the girlfriend and came and sat with us.

Man, being around him is like slipping into your favorite pair of old shoes, and I know he feels the same way. I just don’t know if he’s ready to start up again. I suspect that if he was, he’d have made a move, but I do know that he’s tried dating even more unsuccessfully than my efforts. It all comes down to wether or not he wants a girlfriend, plain and simple. I can tell that he still has feelings for me, and I certainly do for him. I’m thinking I might ask him to that Willie Nelson concert that I’ve got tickets for and see if that doesn’t make it clear that I’d like to try at least dating again. I’m starting to feel distant enough that I think I could handle a little less involvement than we had before, on the surface anyway. All of the old feelings are still there underneath, but maybe a less intrusive physical presence was what he wanted.

I don’t know; all I know is that he kissed me goodbye, as he always does, but I got the distinct impression that if Seamus hadn’t been there, it would have been a really good kiss. As it was, he managed to show his feelings for me in the way he always used to and that I know damn well how to read.

That rodeo was where we met, four years ago. We were about twenty feet from where it all started. He was aware of that, just as much as I was. I’d like for it to be the place where it all was rekindled. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

There are days that I’m proud of this business; days that I feel completely competent in it and formulate great plans for expansion. Days that I feel completely satisfied by working with my hands and for myself.

Today is not one of those days.

Today is the second day in a row that I’ve rolled before dawn in order to get a unit tested before the laundromat which it supplies opens at 7 AM. Yesterday, a key valve stem broke off in my hand; luckily, the valve was still half open, so those people had water for the day.

I bought my very expensive replacement valve (the unit is right up at the larger end of what I’m comfortable working on) and planned to replace it this morning.

I unloaded all of my tools; my pipe wrenches, my small but very heavy toolbox, and the giant pipe stand that I’d brought out specifically for this job.

I got the wrap cut off of the union, only to discover that this called for the next size pipe wrench. The three-footer, which I don’t have, would be expensive to buy, and the hardware store isn’t open yet anyway. So I loaded everything back up and ran in to work to borrow the big one from one of my contractors, which I shouldn’t be doing, but I’ve lent them tools often enough to make it even.

Back out to the site. Unload everything again. Set the pipe stand back up. Everything came apart easily, and I got my valve replaced with no problem. That’s a bad sign; Murphy will get me before I’m through.

Of course, when I went to put the whole assembly back in line, I couldn’t for the life of me get the union to align again. It was close, and it should have worked, but the threads just weren’t grabbing. After struggling for half an hour, I called Marv to come be muscle for me. He wasn’t getting it either, and I was on the phone calling information for a plumber when it finally caught. I just didn’t have the strength to lever it back into place; that last eighth of an inch was killing me. Thank you Marv!

So I got all set up to run the test finally, and an internal part is bad too (of course.) I have to get that and get up at dawn again tomorrow to fix that. Next time, I’m just going to start with a plumber if I have to replace the big external parts, and bill it on through to the client.

This hasn’t been a terribly fun week.