All Things Profane and Sacred

Between weather and cars, I am going insane. It seems like if one of our cars is working, the other isn't. Or if both the cars are working, the wash machine or hot water heater is exploding or freezing or some such.

We've also got some nasty weather out here. A lot of practice sessions with the car and the stick and the rolling backwards downhill got canceled over the holiday weekend due to freezing fucking rain. Last night I couldn't see my headlights heading home and the car behind me kept turning his lights off and on. When I could finally pull over to make sure my lights were actually working, 30 stressful minutes later, I could see front and back lights, but back on the black mountain road with rain screaming down I couldn't see 5 feet in front of the car. On the last hill I was sure my lights had gone because I couldn't see a damn thing and kept praying that no one would rear end me or try to turn into me. When I limped into the driveway, I could see my lights, so they were actually on, but doing me no friggen good.

This morning was my first day driving the bug in to work. I made it and parked it without stalling out or whatever, so that is good. We'll see how the trip home goes. I'm terribly nervous, because I have a meeting in PDX on Friday. I can't drive the old green gal because she has a short in her system and the battery goes dead. So, a shiftin' I will go into the morning rush hour traffic downtown and then out of the evening rush hour traffic. Hope I survive.

Then on Saturday I have to fly out really friggen early in the morning to frozen old Wisconsin. I'm not sure how all this traveling will work out. I'm still trying to figure out if I can keep from stopping on an uphill slope between here and there. Fingers crossed.

I'm back to the house after a week long work thing in Portland. Work put me up at a hotel downtown, so I was within walking distance to just about everything. It was really nice, after these many months of driving 40 minutes in to work or the grocery store, or anywhere else you want/need to be, to be able to walk 5 minutes and buy stumptown coffee and then walk another 5 minutes and be at work. I also got to ride the Max a couple of times, which is awesome. You can actually go wizzing by all the cars that are frozen on the highway while you laugh manically. I really love Portland. If I do decide to move back to a city, Portland is where I want to be.

Still, it was good to get back to the animals and home and J. While things are hard and shitty and difficult right now, and not just for the usual financial reasons, I'm still hanging on the mountain.