Common. Quirks.

“Oh, geez,” he protested. “I was just waitin’ for the end of the song.”

He smiled, and waited for me to smile back. I smiled back.

It was one of the crazy quirks we discovered we had in common, on our first date.

–

We’d pulled into our second restaurant location for dessert and what was supposed to be a good-night, night-cap.

Jeff pulled the handle to get out of the car, then glanced over at me, questioningly.

I hadn’t moved. My hand hovered over the dial. Poised, because, the song on the radio wasn’t at an appropriate end-spot. For my tastes, anyway.

Sheepishly, I explained my compulsion to listen all the way until the end of a tune. Or, at least, wait for a well-timed verse break or chorus completion or the top (or bottom) of an instrumental break, or when the singer took a big breath or something.

Jeff’s concerned expression had quickly morphed into a high-eyebrowed, silly grin. “Me, too!” he endearingly exclaimed.

My expression morphed into a silly grin. I flipped the switch as a comfortable place to end the music arrived, and we exited in sync.

We spent a good 20 minutes or so talking about the best place to stop listening, if you absolutely had to stop listening. If you didn’t have to, we agreed it was best to wait until the song ended. We also both expressed a dislike of DJ’s who liked to talk over carefully crafted ending instrumentals, and confessed to not being able to put a book down until the next chapter; or until the last line of a page had a completed sentence that ended in a period.

–

Jeff sat down at the kitchen table, while I dispersed groceries. I set a pot of water to boil. Spaghetti was always our back-up when Jeff didn’t feel like cooking. Or, when he took an unplanned afternoon nap that lasted a few hours.

“So,” I asked, after loading the milk Jeff said he’d drink into the fridge. “What was the song?”

“I don’t remember. It was kinda a surprise when I woke up.” Jeff told me.

“Hmm,” I wondered aloud. I asked him what his most recent blood-sugar was. “Oh, that’s ok!” he reported. “It’s only 220!” 220 was a low. Norm was 250-280, fasting.

“Why is it 220?” I asked. “What did you eat today?”

He told me he’d made fried eggs and fried bologna for breakfast, and hadn’t been hungry since.

I continued my inquiry. “Any of your meds change? Have you missed any? Run out of anything?”

He thought about that, while tapping two fingers on the table. “Nope. Got ‘em all picked up last week. Nothin’s changed in a while,” he concluded. “I’m just tired.” He chuckled. “Yep. Guess if I keep fallin’ asleep, I must be tired.”

“Well, maybe you should mention that to the doctor, at your next appointment. Do you have another appointment?”

“Yeah. In a couple weeks.”

“Maybe, you should call before then.” I suggested.

“Yeah.” Jeff agreed. “Maybe, I should call.”

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at the wheel

Visions of a mangled Buick danced in my head.

It wasn’t that much of an extreme over-reactive leap, considering.

The previous week, Jeff had accidentally put the car into reverse instead of drive. At the gas station. He managed to crumple a bit of the hood of the vehicle behind him.

Luckily, “It was a junker and the fella didn’t care.” At least, that’s what Jeff told me. Right before he told me, “I gave him 50 bucks, and he was happy.”

“What about our car?” I wanted to know. “Nothin’’” Jeff smiled. “Not even a scratch.”

I was curious about that. How did he damage the other car without damaging ours, and where did he get the $50 from? “Well, I wasn’t going all that fast,” he chuckled. “Buick’s solid.” The money game from the store till.

Anyway, that’s why the ‘Did Jeff tell you about the car?’ question, riled me.

Split-second, internal conversing commenced. I would have noticed that, right? I couldn’t have walked right by the car and missed that, right?

“Oh, it was so funny,” she laughed.

‘Funny’ caught my attention. I rationalized. If it was funny, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

“I looked out my window and Jeff was sittin’ in the car with the door open, and one leg hanging out.”

“One leg out?” Flashback to the time he decided to hang his blood-spurting leg out of the car on our way to the hospital, conveniently located at the end of our street.

“Yep.” she continued. “I looked out again, and he was still there, and the car was still running!”

Again? How much time had passed between the two look-sees? Then my brain caught up.

“The car was … running?” I gasped.

“Yeah, but don’t worry, hon. He woke up.”

“He. Woke. Up?” My stomach dropped into a downward flip-flop. A heart skip had me clutching the phone and the counter. “He was sleeping? And, the car was running?”

“Yeah, it was just a few minutes.”

‘Don’t worry’ is one of those knee-jerk, antonym inducing commands. I was worried. “Ok.” I said, and thanked her for calling and letting me know.

Jeff wandered back into the kitchen with the last of the shopping.

“So…” I raised my eyebrows, and peered over my glasses. “Wanna tell me about falling asleep… in the driveway…:

Jeff took a deep breath.

“With the car running…

 Big-mouth bass impression.

“And one leg hanging out?”

“Oh, geez,” he protested. “I was just waitin’ for the end of the song.”

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Dog Gone, Repeat

It was more than a little bit my fault. I was going for the mail, when our mischievous little bit darted through the door on a Saturday afternoon. She silently slipped behind me, which was amazing, as she was an unusually heavy-footed pup. Stealth really wasn’t her style.

Sadie had slyly wedged herself against me as I  turned the door knob. I looked down at her adorable face and foolishly said, “Stay.” I don’t know why I thought that would work. Never had in the past.

She took it as an invitation to tag along. Sadie pushed through the slight crack, pranced down the drive, t turned a hard right without hesitation.

By the time I got to the street edge, she was out of my sight. I forcefully bellowed her name, hoping she’d hear me. It’s safe to assume most of the neighbors heard me, because Jeff showed up at the door.

Coming out of the house, he called down to me. “Why’re you calling her? Is she with you?”

I wailed the obvious. “No! She ran away!” Then, quickly requested, “You try calling her!”

Instead, Jeff did an about-face and headed back inside. “Let me get my shoes!” he tossed back-over his shoulder.

“Ugh! You don’t need shoes to shout!” I shouted, as the door closed behind him.

Left on my own, I started scouting for Sadie. Within seconds, I spotted her sneaky spots squeaking between two houses on the other side of the street. I headed that direction, only hesitating to glance toward the house when I heard the front door slam, again.

Jeff had wandered back outside, with a firm grip on his car keys and slippers on his feet.

Sadie heard the slam, too. She took off at a sprint, again, heading around the curved corner of our street.

“Argh! I think she’s just gone around the corner!” I informed my husband, assuming he was going to track her down by circling the neighborhood.

He didn’t. Instead, he just stood there next to our old beige Buick, repeatedly hitting the lock button. I surmised he was just having some sort of bumble trouble. But, I was wrong.

The car horn beep-blasts served as a Sadie beacon. She showed up panting and smiling. Just sat her cute little butt down by the driver’s door. Ready and waiting, eagerly watching Jeff.

“Whelp….’ Jeff tossed the keys from one palm to the other. “We need to go for a ride, now.”

“Um, no, we don’t.’ I countered. “Let’s not reward her for running away.”

“Oh, no.” Jeff shook his hands and head. “We’re not rewarding her for running away! We’re rewarding her for coming back!”

When it was obvious I wasn’t immediately following his train of thought, he clarified. “It’s happened before.”

Narrowing my scowl, I put my hands on my hips preparing to ask how it was that I didn’t know of this before, even though I knew the answer.

Before I could formulate an appropriate scorn, Jeff added an addendum.

“Besides,” he reasoned. “It’s a good day for an ice cream, anyway.”

I processed his Jeff-logic and realized the rub. Sadie knew what would happen if she wandered. Jeff knew what would happen if she wandered. That explained her carving a familiar path, and matched his lack of concern. They both waited patiently.

Of course, the ice-cream tricked worked on me, as well.  I laughed at them both, then headed inside to get my purse.

Those two were made for each other, and made for me, too.

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Car Stories

Our next two MIS trips, we joined the ranks of day-trippers.

For the first one, we still had my little Dodge Neon. The car hadn’t yet been through a damaging hail storm, a ride through a ditch on a water-covered road home and one full-on accident.

The hailstorm repair left it with a leaky sunroof, a tail light that had not properly been reinstalled, and back seat floorboards flooded with water. Lesson learned: Pop-up, post storm, windshield replacement and dimple remover outfits that camp out in parking lots, aren’t the best way to go.

Jeff was driving for our low-car off-road experience. We were coming up on a corner, and as we rounded, we noticed the truck in front of us weave. It ran off the road, into a ditch and drove right up over the drain pipe to land on someone’s driveway.

When that water-ballet ended, I realized there were two other cars stalled in the water that the truck had been trying to avoid. Headed for a collision, I shouted at Jeff, “Ditch! Ditch! Ditch!” Jeff swung the car to the right. I’m not sure how our little car didn’t roll. It really should have, since Jeff was on the up side of the down-slope. Jeff kept hold of the wheel, veered back to the left, gunned the engine and tried for a similar path to the driveway that truck was, thankfully, no longer in.

To Jeff’s credit, he didn’t even try to clear the pipe. He just jammed on the gas and barreled us up one of the graveled sides. The underside scraped along the rocks, but we made it to level ground. Without stopping, Jeff maneuvered us out of the driveway. We skidded along a white picket fence that I am still amazed we did not crash through or damage in the slightest. We shot around the standing water, completely avoiding the stalled cars.

Neither one of us said a word. Finally, at the first stop light we came to, Jeff sort of chuckled. “That was some pretty fancy drivin’,don’t ya think?” I agreed and remarked how I just could not believe we came through that unharmed, with no damage to the car.

Jeff tapped the side of his head with a curved pointer finger. “I was thinkin’ like a race-car driver,” he grinned , proudly. “Good thing, I’ve seen a lot of races!”

Our amazement ended about a half-hour after that, when just a few miles from home, the Neon began to smoke under the hood. We’d busted the radiator. Later, I noticed a raw, red spot on Jeff’s left temple where he’d scraped against the window frame and roof. That wasn’t that much of a surprise, considering he normally drove the car with a height-adjusting, slight-head tilt, anyway.

The third strike against my mini, really too-small-for-Jeff, but great gas mileage commuter car, was pretty much a head-to-side collision. That time, I was driving the same ditched road. A little farther on down the stretch, I approached a green traffic light, that quickly turned yellow. I considered hitting the brakes, but when it became clear I wasn’t going to be able to stop in time or behind the line, I hit the gas.

It was Jeff’s turn to shout. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” A large white truck had decided to beat the light on his side and cut directly in front of me. Even standing on the brakes, I hit their right front tire, head-on.  Jeff ended up with deep bruising and a seat-belt rub across his chest. The crazy left-turner ended up with a broken front axel on his brand-new truck, and a ticket.

I didn’t end up with a ticket, but we did have to have the car towed from Saline to Tecumseh. Our insurance paid for a rental car, since the police report had shown the other driver to be at fault. The Dodge dealer inspected the damage, and estimated repairs.   Before we had a chance to get back there, it occurred to us all of our purchased Christmas presents were still in the Neon’s trunk. We didn’t have any real storage space in our apartment, so we figured the best place to store it all was in the car.

When we did finally get to the car shop to discuss the repairs, it became clear that it might be time for a new car, anyway. So, we traded the Silver Pea (as Jeff referred to it) for a much larger, used, gold Buick Century. Not long after, we began to see a lot of gold Buick Century’s driven by a much older crowd. So much so, that it was actually a little difficult to locate ours in parking lots, sometimes.

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