Andrea had physio at 8:30 a.m., and I set my alarm Thursday night for one to go off at 7:30, and my “backup” to go off at 7:40 or so. Instead, I woke up at 5:00, tossed and turned until 6:30, finally fell back asleep, and then blew through both alarms somehow. Andrea came back into the bedroom at 8:05 and said, “Hey, we’re leaving in 10 minutes, right?”.
Crap. Yes, we did leave in that relative timeframe with the plan for me to wait for her while she had her appointment and then drive us both to a co-working space in our ward.
As we were leaving the physio clinic, I’m driving through a parking lot that comes to a T intersection where I have to go left. There’s a stop sign and everything. As I go to turn, I realize there’s someone coming up on the inside of the driver’s side, and I thought they were just being an a**hole, so I blew the horn and hit the brakes hard to avoid turning in front of them. She had her passenger window down and was waving at me. I’m not in the mood, still feeling half-asleep really, and not ready to engage. But wtf, someone wants to FAFO, sure, why not. Nope, she was letting me know my right front tire was flat. Oh. Oops.
Sure enough, when I pulled over, it was pretty low. Not 100% flat, not riding on rims yet, but definitely in need of serious air.
Which was a bit interesting. I replaced all my winter tires a week ago. And I don’t mean just swapping them over from summers, I mean I bought all new tires. It was a lovely service for the car. Major service. Air filters. Plus tire swap. Annnnd, they recommended new tires as they were pretty low, which back in the Spring they said might get another season, but they wanted to flag for me anyway. Screw it, put new ones on. I need them, was just hoping to push another season, but I know the way my brain works. If I had a problem, and somebody got hurt, I would always blame myself for trying to save a few bucks until later. Oh, and my brakes were down last time and time for servicing, could wait, but blah blah blah, same deal. Did them too. A couple of other minor things that were “due”, I was just hoping to ignore until Spring. Nope, I did them all, get it done, move on. $2100 later, I had my car back.
Yet 10 days later, I now have a flat on the new tire? Hmmm…
I called CAA, that’s why I have the membership, right? A few minutes in a chatbot to get them to dispatch, but less than 30 minutes later, closer to 20, a guy showed up with a flatbed towing truck. He said he could do air only, but if I drove too far and it was a continuing problem, I could find myself stuck in traffic somewhere. Or he could put on the spare. Which I didn’t seem to have the keys for the lug nuts for (although it turned out I did, natch). But one other tire was low, too, not a problem YET, but down. And another could have used air. One was fine.
Last week, I felt like I was having trouble with that tire already. Not “flat” but “something”. I decided it was my imagination, just from switching over from summers to winters, and new winters at that. Just a rougher ride. I tested it, it wasn’t pulling when driving, all good. I don’t think I actually looked it when I was in the garage at home or out anywhere. I rarely go to the passenger side of the car; maybe it was like that the whole time.
Screw it, let’s just take the whole thing to the dealership and let them sort it out. No difference in cost for me, covered by CAA. Up on flatbed, the car went, and I had a nice conversation with the tow truck operator all the way to the dealership. In the meantime, Andrea took a cab to work, abandoning me (sob!) in my hour of need (sob!).
The guy at the dealership said immediately, “It’s not the tires. They’re ALL low.” Which was now more apparent in a brightly lit bay. You see, dear readers, I have had those rusty old winter rims for 16 years and they are plennnnnty rusty. So much so that the tires were not sealing properly on the rims. Now, you can clean them up, try to refurbish them a bit so to speak, and keep using them, but eventually they’ll still leak. I don’t have time for that sh**.
I ordered new rims, $500. I didn’t feel like grousing that they should have figured that out the week before and mentioned it when they installed. Although I probably would have ignored them, thinking it was simple upselling. But no, they were done. I know that there are aftermarket options for this, even some scrap metal $$ if you recycle them, but I don’t have time for that sh** either. I asked them to dispose of them for me, which they were happy to do. I wonder if any employee at the dealership took them home for some TLC and resale. They’re practically indestructible.
Okay, one Uber later, I was back home. My day was already in the toilets, and I didn’t have a car to get around in. So I worked from home. The system for booking spaces let me cancel my booking, but normally we post availability in another channel which didn’t like me anymore. Whatever. Moving on. The day was mostly okay, although I’m acting right now with my boss away.
Just after lunch, I had a meeting with one of the provincial partners. Just as we were about to start the meeting, Windows decided that I absolutely 100% needed to reboot immediately. Stuff was crashing, blah blah blah. Okay, reboot. It finished the reboot and hey, look, I need to reboot and install something. Immediately, again. No other options presented. Great, reboot again. Only for it to finish and force a third reboot to have everything set up special and nice and tidy, or something. I know I missed the meeting, with the partner and my boss’ boss. Who I was supposed to support in the meeting. She said, no worries.
I had hoped to have the car back by 2:00 to get J at school, but no dice, he took a cab.
A great day so far, but at least getting closer to being over.
Around 3:30, I got the call to get the car back. Yay, done in time for the weekend, they didn’t need it overnight. I took their Uber offer, got there, it looked a bit like a ghost town for techs, but there were about 8 clients waiting in various chairs. Ah end of day pickups.
But my car was indeed done, all good.
Except I suddenly realized that I didn’t have my wallet with me. I normally carry it in my bag, in an interior pocket. Nope. Not there. I remembered I had it in the morning, cuz I had to get my CAA card out of it. Then I had it getting out of the car to get into the tow truck cab. No memory of anything after that, just my phone and the loose card. So, let’s do the math for possible options:
- I left it in the car although I was sure I put it in my bag (possible);
- I dropped it on the ground outside the car at the pickup point (possible, but not probable);
- I somehow left it in the tow truck (unknown but probably unlikely);
- I had left it on a counter at the dealership in the morning, while checking in (unlikely);
- I left it in the Uber, although I never had to pay for anything (unlikely);
- I left it at home on the shelf by the front door (possible);
- I had taken it out of my bag when doing some online financial stuff, even though I didn’t need it (unlikely);
- I left it at home on my desk downstairs where I had taken stuff out of my bag (phones, notebook) (my best guess); or,
- I left it in the Uber on the way to the dealership (very unlikely).
Nine options that came to be in about 2s when I realized I didn’t have my wallet. Checked the car immediately, wasn’t there, but well, if it wasn’t there then, it didn’t mean it hadn’t been there before. Nevermind, don’t go there. The dealership let me do multiple taps with my phone to pay for everything, and I headed over to pick up Andrea.
In the meantime, I called Jacob and he looked at the two places in the house where it might have been.
It was on my work desk, my best guess, where I had taken stuff out of my bag to set myself up to work at home instead of the office for the day. Whew.
Everyone knows that feeling of thinking they’ve lost their purse or wallet, and it is never fun. For me, it was mostly the administrative headache of cancelling stuff if it was gone. Not the risk, just the bandwidth.
The rest of the day went fine. Not least of which was because I napped before dinner for 2+ hours. We played some board games after dinner and I even won a game (a rare occurrence). Then Andrea and I watched two episodes of The Diplomat before bed.
“All’s well that ends well”, or maybe it is just “All’s well that ends”.
But I still went to bed thinking I would have liked a do-over. Or just slept through the whole day.
