February of broken things

As I mentioned a while ago, MN was in a bit of a fender bender a few weeks ago. Getting her car patched up has been a big hassle. But it’s almost there, so that’s cool.

It turns out, though, that February is the month of broken things. After the car, our printer, which was a nice somewhat expensive laser printer that I bought just over a year ago because I print out so many poems and whatnot, decided to start eating a chunk out of each page – the lower right corner, the tasty fulcrum of all paper. I figured out there’s a problem with the tray, and today I called a repair place, they said bring it in, I drove there, that took 45 minutes, with the baby, got the baby inside, got the printer inside, he said it’s a $45 dollar deposit in cash or check, no plastic, I didn’t have $45 in cash, he said I could mail the check, then he'd start to look at it, I took the baby to the car, then realized I didn’t like the whole thing, so I went back and took the printer. If it’s gonna start at $45, I could just buy a new printer.

Meanwhile, another essential tool for every writer, my desk chair, also broke. This was also about a year old. Ok, I actually broke it by standing on it to get a box, but it sucked nonetheless. A piece on the base broke so instead of gliding on its wheels, it scrapes along the carpet, quietly pleading, "Kill me, kill me."

Throughout all of this my “Low Coolant” light has been on in my car. I’d have been more concerned about this, but I checked the coolant, and it was ok. The light also popped on sporadically, without regard to the actual heat of the engine. Still, I’ve been driving around with the heat on to keep it cool, even on days like today, when it was near 60.

After the printer fiasco, I decided “Screw that” (“Screw that” being a common mantra for me these days), and I took the car in to a garage I like. They said the sensor in the resevoir is broken, no big deal, they’ll order the part and fix it with my next oil change. They also topped off my low brake fluid (which didn’t cause a light to go on). All for free. Plus, they let me change the baby on their couch, which I normally wouldn’t do, but it was a nasty bathroom. They were cool.

Then I went to Office Max, where things are cheap and service is crappy (that’s on their nametags), and bought a new chair on sale cheap, plus a 3-year warranty for $5. Oh yeah, I may not stand on this chair this year, but in 2 years? I’ll have forgotten today and I’ll be showing Paxton how to have a good time by kneeling on the chair and spinning as fast as you can as long as you can until you fall off. (Or reliving the Karate Kid ... remember that? That was awesome.)

Oh, and one last thing. At the job fair, my only super nice sport coat that my parents bought for me because they’re rich and I’m not and I’ve nursed through a year of teaching – it ripped, before my first interview. I didn’t take that as an omen, I just was thankful we were packed in like sardines (tangent: I think sardine cans mostly exist today simply because of that simile) and I had to sit sideways often, so I just sat so they could see the rip. [post subtitle: Posting of the comma -or- Posting of the long, run-on, never-ending, keep it going sentence]