Where Can I Buy A Giant Shoe Horn?

Vince and I went shopping the other day for miscellaneous stuff. It can only be called “miscellaneous” when you have to shop at one store to replace a broken glass globe for a ceiling light, another store for a bottle of mature multivitamins and a third store for a shoe horn. There was no such thing as one-stop shopping for us the other day.

We went to three stores before we chanced upon the very last shoe horn that Target carried. Vince had a bit of a desperate look in his eye as he practically badgered the clerk into finding another one – any other broken down and ratty old shoe horn they might have lingering “in the back.” Why? Well, because it was an animal stripe print. Only I don’t really know any animals that are hot pink- and black-striped.

The clerk said it was the last one they had and even tried to convince Vince that it was a “manly” sort of shoe horn. The look he gave her caused her to scurry away in hopes of finding something easier to handle, like perhaps tackling a shoplifter or something. In defeat, we ended up purchasing it. Vince wasn’t very happy about having to use a hot pink striped shoe horn, but was a little happier when it rang up as a dollar, down from $10. Frugality wins over manly posturing every time.

I was thinking about that shoe horn last night when I parked my car in the garage. We have so much crap in there I can barely fit the car inside. Could’ve used a giant shoe horn to maneuver the vehicle so that it doesn’t hit the sky-high pile of boxes on the right, or the shelving unit in the front – but leave enough room to get out the driver’s side door without bashing into the trash can on the left. Even worse, we currently have a large carton that needs to be unpacked sitting in front of the shelving unit – so I had even less room to maneuver.

Sigh. We need a bigger garage.

Or maybe we just need to get rid of a whole bunch of junk.

Sadly, I didn’t have that giant shoe horn last night because I didn’t pull the car in far enough, and unbeknownst to me, the garage door scraped the bumper on the way down. Vince noticed it right off when he came home after me – probably because he heard the screeching sound as the garage door scraped the bumper on the way back up, too.

So he kindly moved my car farther into the garage and then also kindly didn’t mention it until we finished dinner. Probably he wanted to have a nice meal together before I got all pissy about the bumper. And, sure enough, I was mad at myself about it all night about it. Not to mention a little sick about it, too.

This morning was a different story. I started to pull my car straight back out of the garage as I do every morning…only I couldn’t. Apparently, Vince had pulled the car in a little too close to the right-hand side of the garage so that it was rubbing up against the sky-high stack of cartons.

I hadn’t moved two inches before one of the boxes lost its precarious hold on top of the pile and crashed down upon the top of my car. I immediately stopped and got out to see the next cataclysmic tragedy that had befallen my vehicle and noticed that the entire pile of boxes was leaning dangerously close to my car ready to topple over at the slightest movement.

Clearly I couldn’t fit between the right side of the car and the stack of boxes to do any good. Heck, a 90lb. emaciated supermodel wouldn’t even have been able to get through there. Nor would a giant shoe horn have helped in this situation. Feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on, I walked around to the front of the car, but couldn’t even reach the boxes to move them away from my car.

I stood there for a moment debating whether or not to call my boss and tell him I’d be late as I was feeling a little, uh, “boxed in,” (sorry), but instead figured it was more prudent to shut off my car. No need to asphyxiate myself as the garage – despite the open door – was filling up with carbon monoxide. While scratches on the bumper are upsetting, they are not a good enough reason to end it all.

Feeling even more determined (and a little desperate) to get myself out of this situation, I gave a superhuman stretch and was somehow able to shove some of the boxes out of the way – although not before disturbing another stack of flattened boxes, which slid off and conked me on the head, making my headache even worse.

By this point, I could only shake my head a laugh a little ruefully. It was either that – or scream. And I didn’t want to disturb any neighbors that had the good fortune of sleeping in this morning.

So I got back in my car, started it up and gingerly pulled away from the boxes. And, lo and behold, I was out of the garage without suffering more dings or dents to my car.

I quickly shut the automatic garage door opener without looking at the mess inside because I didn’t want to deal with it. And then I drove like a bat out of hell toward work so I wouldn’t have to explain my tardiness.

I can only wonder what Vince will think when he gets home. He’ll see a pile of flattened box (probably impeding his progress to the back door). He’ll also see either (a) a Jenga-like configuration of boxes haphazardly stacked along the wall ready to topple over any moment or (b) a disturbing pile of boxes lying in the middle of the garage floor because they finally gave up and fell over.

Yeah…I think we’re definitely gonna need that giant shoe horn. It’s either that – or we’re gonna have to rent another garage somewhere. I don’t think my car can take any more dings, dents or scratches and I don’t think I can take too many more shots to the head. I’m dizzy enough.

Nothing Says “I Love You” like Fixing a Broken Turn Signal

I came home from work last night a little frazzled because I’d had to stop at the grocery store and gas station on the way home and I knew Vince already had dinner on the table. And, okay, so it was take-out – but, hey, any meal in which I do not have to take out (ha) a pot or a pan gives him extra points in the Good Husband column.

I’d drunk an entire bottle of water right before leaving work, though, and, well, I had to go. I realized this only after I’d left the store and the gas station, so my only recourse was to make it home. Fast. So I called Vince and warned him to steer clear of the path between the door and the, uh, facilities.

As I flew through the kitchen on my way to the bathroom, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a beautiful bouquet of red roses sitting on the counter awaiting my arrival home.

Sadly, I couldn’t stop to admire them because Mother Nature is sort of mean and doesn’t allow women my age a whole lot of, um, “wiggle room” when we have to go.

But when all was right with the world again and I stopped repeating the words “Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now” from that stupid commercial, I went back to the kitchen to read the card that accompanied my Sweetest Day surprise. It read: “I love you more than roses. I love you more than anything.”

Oh, how lucky and blessed am I?

Not only did he buy the roses, but he also had them wrapped in purple paper and tied with a purple bow. This might seem like an insignificant detail – except the colors of our wedding were apple red and purple, so I knew Vince had added this touch on purpose.

After we ate dinner and arranged the roses in a vase and set them on the dining room table, we left to run a couple errands since we’re going to be out of town this weekend. On the way home from the store, Vince swung into a car parts place to see if he could fix the left turn signal on my car, which has been acting up for quite some time despite the installation of numerous replacement bulbs at $7 a pop.

While Vince and the guy from the store did their male thing of fiddling around under the hood trying to get the part to operate properly, I sat in comfort inside the car reading the last chapter of my book and feeling grateful that I wasn’t standing outside around the front of my car with an equally perplexed look on my face.

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to fix the turn signal, so Vince said he’d take my car in to the dealership today to have it looked at. (And to have the oil changed, too, while he was at it.) And all this on his day off work.

Did I already say I was blessed?

Handling these sorts of things for me says “I love you” just as much as the beautiful roses sitting on the dining room table.

We have a little inside joke where Vince says, “So…you think you’ll keep me around for another week?” I usually pause, tap my finger against my cheek as if I’m thinking about it and say, “Yeahhhh…I think I’ll keep you around for another week.”

But you know what? I think I’ll keep him around for a lifetime.

The "Check Engine" Incident

I just finished a blog about how my car was past due for its 3,000 mile oil change, and it reminded me of a story when I was in college that I wanted to share.

I didn’t own a car in college. Heck, I didn’t own my own car until I was 23 and realized that it was taking me 45 minutes to get to work – and I only lived about 5 minutes away. I even had to transfer buses downtown! (I didn’t know how close to work I actually lived because of, again, that whole “directionally challenged” thing. But that’s another story…)

Anyway, in the years before I entered the world of car ownership, my parents generously allowed me to borrow one of their cars, usually without requiring me to sign promissory notes. More often it was my dad’s ugly green Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler/whatever car and not my mom’s sporty cream-colored Mustang, but I was happy to borrow any wheels at all, so I didn’t care all that much.

Their only requirement was that I had to put gas in the car. And they wanted me to keep it dent-free, but that was pretty much an unspoken assumption.

So one Friday night, my girlfriend Diana and I decided to drive to Salem to go dancing at a place called, “The Hunt Club.” Yes, I’m ashamed to say, it really was called that. What’s more, we went to this club whenever I came home for the weekend, which was fairly often – so we must have liked the joint.

(Oh, and just so you know, I wasn’t into “hunting” all that much. I was, after all, a serious college student and didn’t have time for silly things like chasing boys. Um, yeah. Okay, the truth is that I wasn’t into long-distance romances at the time.)

Anyway, we never made it to the Hunt Club that fine spring evening.

I had asked my dad if I could borrow his car and without hesitation he handed over his keys. That was easy, I thought. So I picked up Diana and, dressed to the hilt in our finest dancin’ clothes and high heels, we took off for Salem.

Between Alliance and Salem is (or was back then, anyway) a long stretch of 2-lane country road without streetlights.

There we were sailing along the road chattering away without a care in the world when about 5 miles before reaching our destination, the “Check Engine” light came on. I said to Diana, “Hmmm…wonder if that’s serious?” Diana, clearly not a car expert either, shrugged and said, “Dunno.”

So we kept on going. I figured I would call my dad once we reached the Hunt Club to ask him what we should do.

Oh, the irony of hindsight.

A few minutes later, we realized it was sort of serious when the car stalled and then died.

This was back in the day before cell phones, so I couldn’t whip out my trusty iPhone and call home. Instead, there we were on a dark, lonely stretch of road too far away from the Hunt Club and too far away from home. We sort of thought we remembered seeing a pay phone about half a mile or so back at a deserted gas station, but we weren’t positive.

For about five minutes we sat in the car debating what to do, but since no one passed our broken-down ugly green car the whole time, we realized we were going to have to hoof it back to see about that pay phone. Diana didn’t want to stay in the car by herself, so we carefully locked the vehicle and started teetering down the road in the dark in our high heels. There was no berm on the 2-lane road either and, again, no lights.

Now I realize you probably don’t know my friend Diana, but let me just say that the girl could talk. When I first met her in grade school she was shy and quiet, but then at some point in high school, the dam broke and all the things that she’d been holding back came out in a torrent. And she didn’t ever really stop talking. It’s one of the things I loved about her because I could pretty much just toss in an occasional “uh huh” and a “yeah” and she’d just keep on going.

So there we were click-clacking down the road in our heels. I was slightly worried about the car and praying that we’d find a pay phone once we reached the deserted gas station, and also hoping that maybe it wasn’t anything serious so we could still possibly get in some dancing and not waste our cute outfits. All these thoughts were going through my head when I took a step…and then landed flat on my back in a ditch! One minute the road was there, and then suddenly it wasn’t.

And as I was lying there on my back, I knew for SURE that we weren’t going to be dancing that night as my entire back – from my carefully coiffed head to the heels of my strappy lavender sandals – was now covered in mud.

Diana, oblivious, kept on walking and talking. After a few more steps, she must have realized I was no longer beside her. The next thing I see is Diana’s face looming above me from the roadside. As she peered down at me in the ditch, she said, “Jane! What are you doing down there?!”

Like I’d done it on purpose.

I said, “Well, I was getting tired, so I thought I’d take a little break and…what are you – nuts? I fell! Get me outta here!”

Right then the absurdity of our situation hit me and I started giggling. Then I started laughing. Once Diana realized I wasn’t seriously hurt, she started laughing, too, and it got so bad we couldn’t catch our breath. She just kept pointing at me and howling.

Finally, she managed to pull herself together and reached down to help me climb out of the ditch. Then, she looked at me and said, “Jane! You’re all covered in mud! We can’t go dancing now!”

That did us in. We were both doubled over laughing so hard we had tears running down our faces. Which ruined our makeup, but was sort of a moot point by then anyway.

I don’t remember what happened after that, except that we did reach my dad who came and picked us up in my mom’s sporty cream-colored Mustang. Probably he brought a towel so that I didn’t get the interior muddy, but again, it’s all sort of a blur.

It turns out that Dad’s car was out of oil, which he’d intended to replace, but had forgotten about before handing me the keys.

Filed under the category of “Duh,” a car without oil is not a good thing. And, yes, we fried the engine. And I never saw that ugly green Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler/whatever car again.

Surprisingly, my parents didn’t give me a lot of grief about killing their car, but I suspect that my dad felt responsible and was willing to take the blame for the incident. They did, however, impress upon me the importance of immediately stopping if ever the “Check Engine” light comes on again in any vehicle.

This has happened a couple of times since then and, you should know, I positively panic. My instant reaction is to stomp on the brake in the middle of the freeway in rush hour traffic and stop the car right then and there. Fortunately, I am able to realize the foolishness of such a decision, so I pull over to the side of the road. But I do so immediately. And then I whip out my trusty iPhone to call for help.

Oh, and I rarely wear high heels anymore. If you’re ever forced to walk down a dark, lonely country road, it’s far better to be wearing flats.