It's the little things

I read once that it isn't the big traumas in life that make people unhappy, but the small, everyday annoyances that wear away at a person's serenity. A squeaky door for example. A leaking faucet. The idea is that if you deal with the small things that bug you, the satisfaction you will feel far exceeds whatever effort you put out to fix the thing.

I'm pretty sure this happens in reverse, too. A lot of small things conspired against me in November and December and I got stuck. The weather was a problem--it was colder and rainier than usual, which made getting around without a car a bigger headache than usual. Then my bike seat was stolen. My debit card number was pirated somehow, too, so I had to cancel my card and wait for a new one. Don't even ask about switching health insurance and getting my prescriptions filled.

I know I sound like a big whiner, but it was too much. I got stuck. I took to my bed when the kids were with their dad, unable to do much of anything.

And then I got unstuck. Right after Christmas, I went into cleanse mode and started cleaning out the house, closet by closet. I'm throwing stuff out, stacking it for donation. It's been psychically cleansing too. I bought a new bike seat. And it's still light when I get off the bus now. So ends the winter of our discontent.

From My Kids' Perspective

A conversation between my eight- and ten-year old, as relayed to me by their father:

"I can't wait 'til April 8."

"Yeah, when Mom can drive again."

My ten year old, "I bet she'll never drink again. She could get in so much trouble! [and to his dad] She could go to jail, and then we'd have to live with you for a year!

Dad, amused at their horror at living with him for A WHOLE YEAR, says diplomatically, "well, I think we've all learned a lot this year."

The ten year-old persists,

"And we'd have to visit her in jail and it would be like going to that hospital in the middle of the water."

Dad puzzles over this description, and finally comes up with,

"Alcatraz?"

"Yeah."

It's just a good thing that 10 year-olds aren't tasked with determining sentences for misdemeanors.

David Sedaris Doesn't Drive

This comforts me somehow. I don't know why. I'm not a wildly popular author with one of the finest-tuned senses of humor in the world with a quirky voice. I'm a convicted drunk driver. We're not even close to being of the same world. Yet it comforts me just the same.

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 20 and going into my last year in college. This was unheard of in southern California at the time. Now, there are more restrictions--kids can drive at 16, but I don't think they can drive with anyone else in the car for ages, certainly not their friends. An armed guard, maybe.

Then, however, you skipped the morning at school on your 16th birthday, and drove all of your friends to the beach that afternoon. It was a middle-class neighborhood, but kids got cars for their birthdays.

My 16th birthday came and went with a learner's permit fading in my wallet. My parents tried, they really did. My father patiently tried to teach me to drive a stick shift, which introduced far too many actions for my brain to handle at one time. My mother, worried that I was about to hit the cars on the right side of the street, cowered near the passenger door, begging me to move more toward the center of the road.

The summer before my senior year in college, however, I was determined to get it done. I was living with my boyfriend at the time (very scandalous). He had a little blue Toyota Tercel. Hatchback. No radio.

The weekend before my appointment to get my license, we went down to Laguna Seca to a Grateful Dead show. On the way back (the following day, totally sober), boyfriend suggests I drive, as practice, for the test the next day.

I get us all the way up to Palo Alto without incident. Right before we hit the off-ramp, boyfriend notes that now is the time to be careful, that most accidents occur within two miles of home. I successfully downshift on the off-ramp, but to this day, I'm not really sure what happened next. I think I tried to slow down, and hit the clutch instead of the brake? At any rate, with a carful of guys screaming "brake, brake," I plowed into a pick-up truck in front of me. The Tercel was no match. The hood bent into a ninety degree angle. No one one was hurt, but in a million years, I couldn't tell you how mortified I was.

I did get my license the next day. My dad bought me a Datsun B210 four-door coupe. The boyfriend and I were through soon thereafter. And my driving career began.

And Now What?

The crappy part of not being able to drive is that on a rainy day, you can't just jump in the car, drive to Target, and spend a little bit of cash on something you don't really need but will amuse you and the kids for awhile.

Yeah, yeah, I know, it'll make me more spiritual, quality time with the kids, blah blah blah. All I really want is a pair of knock-off UGGs and to buy the kids a hot dog.

Instead, I'm in my p.j.s close to noon, we have a fire going, and Sponge Bob is on t.v. I gave A. an old iPod of mine, so we're filling it up with music. Kid's taste is unpredictable. He'll take Meatloaf, but no Tom Petty. He likes some re-mixes from the Shrek soundtrack. A new group I found called Free Energy works, but no Neil Young. I had to buy the Green Day song from the Transformers soundtrack, my Green Day albums were too old, I guess.

The dogs are circling our small house like sharks, looking for food to steal, confused about the weather.

Luckily, I have chocolate chips. Fresh batches of cookies solve everything.

Missing

Someone stole my bike helmet. And my seat. When I went to pick up my bike from where I park it when I catch the bus, it looked sad and a little decapitated. My friend Heidi says she's lost five seats in the last year--she rides her bike everywhere. So this is to be expected?

When I was in college, it was a good prank to steal someone's bike seat. But now? I guess I understand the helmet, but where do the seats go? Is there a booth at the swap meet full of bike seats?

I loved that seat--it had some kind of gel core, and was wide and cushy. It had a design that matched the bike.

I'm guessing I can find another one. I haven't really tried yet. And then I'm going to need a large bag so that when I lock up the bike, I can take the seat and the helmet with me. Geez.

Requiem for a Dream

It's worth noting that what started on a lovely day in October of 1996 ended today--another lovely day--in a courthouse in San Diego.

We didn't even have to go in front of the judge, we were prepared with all of our signed paperwork, and the facilitator took care of the rest.

Then we went to breakfast and did some shopping. We talked about what to get the kids for Christmas, planned A's birthday party, and made each other laugh. Then we went together to the kids' parent-teacher conferences.

We were friends years before we married. We are friends now. We have children together, and one day, I hope, grandchildren. So this is an ending of something that existed on paper, but I believe the best part lives on.

And Yet Another Fine Mess

I'm sitting at the courthouse again. Waiting. I have number 60 and they're on number 18.

Among the things I was supposed to do, one was to attend a MADD Victim Impact Panel. Going through some papers on Sunday, I realized I had a deadline for that. A deadline that passed about six weeks ago. And there are big letters underneath the deadline saying A WARRANT WILL BE ISSUED FOR MY ARREST if I miss the deadline. So I did what comes naturally. I panicked.

No, really. I literally went to the window to see whether or not a peace officer was walking up the front steps to arrest me. What if they came to take me away while my kids were home? Their dad was out of town. Oh my god, would the arresting officer give me time to call someone to get them? Or would they be taken by child protective services? Surely their dad would then decide enough was enough and demand full custody of them? Would I lose my job because I was in jail? I'm sure I would, and then I would lose my house.

I pretty much had myself in a homeless shelter in forty seconds flat.

Then it occurred to me that outstanding arrest warrants might be online. And they are! I tried every possible permutation of my name and came up empty. So I probably wasn't going to be rousted out of bed in the middle of the night and hauled to the pokey.

I then proceeded with self-flagellation. How utterly and completely stupid could I be?

I had some optimism that I could take care of the problem over the phone. But the telephone number for the courthouse is just an unending loop. You can't talk to an actual human being. My only option was to come down to the courthouse. Not the downtown courthouse that's near my office and easy to get to--no, the east county courthouse. The one that takes two hours by bus and trolley to get to.

So this presents the problem of either taking a cab, which I couldn't really afford at the moment, or asking someone to drive me. I couldn't really ask my parents. They've been through so much about this already, and I am so embarrassed that I screwed this up that I don't even want to tell them. Which brings me to asking a friend, and we've already discussed how much I hate to do that. But I really don't want to go to jail. So I swallow my pride and text an innocent--my friend Paula, bless her--who cheerfully drove me and was fun company to boot.

They're on number 21 now.

Bunch of guys sitting near me, waiting also. They're trading stories of the junkies they witnessed coming off of their respective drugs in their respective holding cells. The stories are gross. But they're laughing about their warrants. They're not all freaked out. Woman and her mother on the other side of me. Mother keeps calling the daughter "Baby"; daughter appears to be about 35.

Oh, we're moving now. We've jumped to 39.

From what I've gathered, the guys next to me have collective charges of possession, grand theft auto, driving under the influence, and public intoxication. The best part, though, is that they keep complaining about how slow the clerk is--"Ugh, this is your tax dollars at work." Never mind that we're all convicted criminals. Or convicted misdemeanants.

The crowd gets a little rowdy as the clerk calls the numbers, yelling "Bingo!" and "What'd I win?" The clerk gets testy and tells us to quiet down.

We're on number 49 now.

The bench we're all sitting on is slatted and uncomfortable. It's an unpleasant reminder of the bench in the holding cell.

60! Wait, yes, that's me. I walk up and smile, quietly tell the clerk that I've missed my MADD class, and I'm really sorry, but is there any way she can give me an extension? She starts punching in numbers into the computer, and asks "Is this your first extension?" My first? People do this? All the time? It's this easy? Not even a court appearance? I yes ma'am her, and she goes to get my file.

And like that, there's a thirty-day extension, all filled out on official paper and I am not going back to jail. Which is a relief.