A funny thing happened on the way home . . .

After being held hostage in a hospital for a week, I was finally cleared to leave.  Not as easy as it sounds given the fact that I required most of my creature comforts from home during my stay.  I had everything - from several pairs of jammies to my water pic.  So per hospital policy, my box of necessities and I were wheeled to the parking lot.

As soon as my husband started the car, he turned to me and said there was something wrong with the car.  It had started the night before.  "What?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied as he backed out of the parking space.

I rolled down the window and heard a rhythmic thump as the car moved.  “Sounds like a tire,” I said.
Darling husband said no, that he’d checked the tires.  Muffler? I guessed.
Again he dismissed me.  Which is common when it comes to anything manly.  The only problem is my husband has no man skills.  He can barely use duct tape.  But he had a plan.  He’d drop off the 8 new prescriptions, take me home, then take the car to the dealership.  Sounded good.  The car kept making that death rattle, so I thought the plan was sound.  We drove about 5 miles to the strip mall where the pharmacy is and as we drove by the ever-present homeless guy, he called out “Hey! You’ve got a flat tire!”
Darling husband parked and we both got out of the car and sure enough, the rear passenger side tire was as flat as a pancake.  “I thought you said you checked the tires,” I admonished.
“I did,” he insisted.  “But only the ones in the front.”
Who does that? I wondered as he dashed into the pharmacy to drop off the prescriptions.  So he comes out and I told him we had to take it to the tire place immediately.  I’m thinking he’s probably ruined the rim since he’d told me the noise started the day before.  And to make matters worse, we have AAA.  It wasn’t even like he had to change a tire himself.
So we drove across the street to the tire place.  Even the sales guy laughed at my husband.  He was also stunned that darling husband hadn’t ruined the rim.  Said it would be about an hour and a half, so instead of sitting in the tire place, we walked next door to Chili’s to eat and kill time.  So there I sit, wearing hospital bracelets as my accessories with some serious bed head.  And while in the hospital I’d been on a very strict diet, so the smell of spicy food was very appealing.  Note to self: lay off the Mexican when you’ve been consuming chicken broth and tea for a week.
$128.00 later, we were on our way back to the pharmacy, then finally I got to reunite with my own mattress.
The only thing that makes this story worse is it isn’t the first time its happened.  Ten years ago darling husband had ignored a service light on the car when he came to collect me from a hospital.  The engine quit at a stoplight in the heart of Baltimore and we ended up hitching a ride home with the tow truck driver.  All because he had failed to maintain the car properly.  He sees those lights on the dashboard as suggestions.  A dangerous philosophy when you don’t even know how to check a dip stick.
I have friends with handy husbands and I must admit, I get a tad jealous.  Anything more complicated than hanging a picture and I have to run to the yellow pages.  I even had to pay an electrician to change the light bulbs (fluorescents) in my kitchen.  Darling husband didn’t know how to twist them into place.  He can’t even grill.  When I say he has no man skills, I mean none, zero.
But he has other wonderful qualities that make him a keeper.  He’s the funniest person I know, which off-sets his lack of other skills.  Now, if I could only find a decent handyman . . .

Back from the dead

I'm ready to come out of hiding.  Well, I wasn't hiding so much as I was taking a long look at my career.  It just took me 2 years to do it.  Well, not really 2 years, I had a lot of interruptions.  My daughter is now a college freshman and since I married a man with children, this is the first time in my 33 year marriage that we've had an empty nest.  (And thanks to college girl, empty wallets <g>).

So the last couple of months I've been working on a deal with Grand Central (shout out to Donna Bagdasarian) and we finally got things all worked out.  At least I think we did.  That was the day my pool motor committed slow suicide, making this awful, deafening sound because the water was so low but I'm pretty sure I got it right.  But it was a Lucy Ricardo moment.  I was cradling the phone with my shoulder and went toward the clump of bushes where the pool controls are hidden.  I wasn't alone.

There on the top of the hedge was a black snake sunning himself.  Or herself, I have no idea how to determine snake gender and I'm not about to learn now.  I needed a plan B.  So I decided to just get the hose and add water, all the while praying that my pool didn't have a crack or a pipe issue.

All this comes on the heels of my house attacking me.  Last week the garage door broke.  My hubby pulled on the red emergency cord and snap - it was lying limply in his palm.  We called the installation company but it would take them 3 days to come out.  So we waited for the grounds service and asked if they would venture back inside the bushes to shut down the pool motor.  Nice guys and happy to do it, even when Snake 1 and Snake 2 slithered out from beneath the hedge.  I'd love to meet the person who determined that snakes are more afraid of me than I am of it.  What a crock. Seeing those snakes was enough to make me pee myself.

Turns out the garage door only needed a new fuse and rip cord and the pool was nothing but evaporation from the strong winds.  And I'm counting the days until I can move into condo because the only person more afraid of snakes is my darling hubby.

More on my return to writing  - including the release date for the next Finley adventure - NO RETURNS!  Finley faces the most difficult case of her career - herr mother is the prime