It's Raining, It's Pouring, Old Val Finds It Abhorring

Sometimes, life serves up a banquet. Your day is all crab legs and lobster tails and caviar and roast goose and prime rib and filet mignon and...well...just add everything that was piled on the table for those workhouse workers in the 1968 Academy Award winning best picture Oliver! You can see the spread at 1:17 in this clip. Watch fast! Then you're back to gruel. But even that would be a treat for Val, after the way this day turned out.

Yes, not only was Val not served a banquet, she was instead served a crap sandwich. WAIT! That's too delicious to describe the plate set before Val this morning. Ha! Who am I kidding? There was no plate. Not even a thin, non-absorbent school-issue paper towel. Nope. Val was served up a dollop of crap on a cracker. Not even a Ritz, mind you, but a Hi Ho found under the back seat of the car three years after the child no longer needed his safety seat.

It all started with my aching knees, who have decided to rebel from their shopping trip through Walmart yesterday, or their ups and downs with the laundry, or the stock-still statue impersonation during the preparation of the cauldron full of potatoes, sausage and cabbage. Or it's just that darn blood-thinner medicine being extra efficient, filling up my joints with thin blood after the normal wear-and-tear. Or the weather has made my knees a more accurate predictor of low pressure systems than the TV weathermen.

Whatever the case, I could hardly make it down the four porch steps to the garage. I though I was going to need a rescue chopper to lower a metal basket and strap me in and winch me down to sidewalk level. So painful that I might have let out a whimper, which made my sweet, sweet Juno poke her rubbery black nose into my face without even prancing towards the cat kibble. So painful. Even sitting in T-Hoe's soft leather seat made my knees hurt. But that was not my only issue this morning.

It's too bad Hick can't poop out headlights for T-Hoe. Because he still hasn't gotten me that one he said he ordered, only put back the old one he took out because it was foggy. So this morning, as I backed T-Hoe out of the garage, The Pony suddenly came to life and did something that might have been construed as helping people. Shh...don't tell the ACT interest inventory. I'm not about to go through those seven pages again to update them.

"Hey. Are both headlights working?"

"I don't know. It looks funny. Get out and run around and check."

"The right one is out on the top."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The yellow part works, but the white part doesn't."

"Thanks. Take my phone and text Dad. Tell him that NOW the right headlight is out."

Well, when it rains, it pours. You should know that from the Morton salt girl. As we rolled at a high rate of speed (BUT LEGAL!) down the old road to school, nearly to the park, actually, mere miles from my building, the dashboard lit up with flashing warning lights. Where there used to be the SERVICE SUSPENSION SYSTEM light that's been on for several months, a half-tire blinked on and off in cheery orange color.

Val is no automobile simpleton. She knew right away to push the button to check on her tire pressure. Faithful followers might remember how the left front tire loses three pounds of air a week. So The Pony puts it in at the convenience store for me. I hit the button, and that tire was fine. Only two pounds down. So I hit it again for the rear tires, which you may recall have been having an issue, what with the sensor telling me the left tire is the right tire, and the right tire is the left tire. Makes it kind of confusing to order The Pony around at the air pump.

Now that sensor told me that my left rear tire had 35 pounds of pressure, and the right rear tire had -- pounds of pressure. Seriously? Who has -- pounds of pressure in their tire?

Of course I thought the thing was flat, even though there was no wobble, and here I was almost to school, where T-Hoe had to sit on the parking lot all day, getting flatter and flatter in his right rear. Or would he? Maybe it was the LEFT rear that was actually flat! So I pulled off at the only gas station in town, which, by the way, has NO air pump, and made The Pony inspect tires. He reported they looked like they always look. So I went on to work and drove home and pretty much told Hick to get me a manual tire gauge for The Pony to use every day.

Sometimes, I think we might as well be back in the good ol' days, when people kicked their tires to see if they were inflated properly. Then again...that would hurt my knees.