The Saga of a Skinny Driveway

And still it rains. After a welcome break, with sunshine, today dawned dismal and damp, with rain threatening all day. Along with the general unpleasantness, it made everything muddy and slippery, and therein lies my tale.

My house was built in 1922 (some records say 1926, but I won’t quibble over four years). One of it’s less attractive features is a skinny driveway with a slight jog in it right by the electronic gate. There’s also a curb on the right side, by the house, and a stiff lip on the left by the grassy strip between my driveway and my neighbor’s. It’s never bothered me, but several of my friends are reluctant to drive up it, and I have one or two for whom attempting the feat is such a disaster I simply cook lunch for them when we want to visit.

Today I had lunch with a friend who can do the driveway, with some trepidation, but won’t go beyond the gate. For reasons too complicated to explain that makes it easier for her to pull into my neighbors’ drive to get me—they don’t mind, but their driveway is unpaved gravel. Today I got into the car and she put my walker in the trunk and came to get into the driver’s seat. I saw a brief flash of her and then nothing. I waited, thinking she’d gone back to close the trunk or some such. But it was too long, and I began to fear she’d fallen (she is a lady of some age, as am I). I began to review options, but there weren’t many.

The best seemed to be getting out of the car to check, making my way around it by holding on, and then calling 911. Helping her up was not something I could accomplish—one of those times when I wanted to roll things back to three years ago or so to when I was spry. As I considered that, she got into the car. She had indeed fallen and struggled to get up without putting pressure on her knee, surgically replaced about a year ago. When I told her my plan, she said, “The last thing I want is for you to have gotten out of the car.”

Tonight, my Wednesday dinner pal, Betty, and I went to dinner. We’ve been doing that for years. When we first started, I used to pick her up, but for a long time now, she’s picked me up. She drives in and out of the driveway with concentration but no problems. When we came home tonight, I watched her back out so that I could close the electronic gate when she was gone. But she didn’t go. She backed, and then came forward, backed and came forward, finally came forward and was apparently stuck. I could see that the headlights were at an angle. Nothing happened for a long time.

Once again, I railed against my lack of mobility. I watched and worried, finally saw Jordan go down the porch steps to help. Still nothing happened for what seemed an eternity. Then, finally, slowly, the car inched forward. With my mind that instantly goes to the worst disaster, I decided she had busted a tire on that concrete lip. But no, the car slowly righted itself and began to back up.

It turned out Jordan drove it out to the street. Betty had gotten one tire over the lip and into the mud between the two driveways. Every time she tried to accelerate, the tire couldn’t get any traction in the mud. Our neighbor came out (Betty nearly hit his car, don’t know if he knows that), put something under that wheel, and between him and Jordan they got the car back in the driveway.

Jordan came in saying, “We’ve got to get another light out there. I couldn’t see anything, and I know what’s there.”

All’s well that ends well. Everyone is safe and unhurt tonight, no cars are damaged, and the worst is that my lunch friend’s raincoat needs to go to the cleaners. But we will be putting another light in the driveway. Blessings on Jordan and Jim Carmical, our good neighbor.

Procrastination

Writers have many ways of avoiding that empty computer screen—some clean the bathroom, others scrub floors or wash windows, a few go for long walks (for inspiration, of course), still others dig in the garden or mow the lawn. My preferred method of procrastination is cooking, so today, the day I had marked to charge back into my work-in-progress, I made black bean soup and pesto.

I’ve shared my recipe for black bean soup here before, so I won’t repeat it. Suffice to say it is one of those things that I cannot make without spraying it all over the kitchen—counter, wall, floor. The pesto went a bit better, but I also cannot cook without spilling, so now my relatively clean jeans have a big spot of olive oil on them. In my own defense, I will say that cooking from a seated walker is not easy—lots of standing up and sitting down, Probably good exercise.

I am not faithful about my exercises these days. I think that hospital stay demoralized me in more ways than one, and my walking program has taken a backward slide. Some days I can’t imagine walking unassisted. When I say I can’t walk, everyone from my daughters to the technologist at a mammogram yesterday says to me that I am walking, just not alone. So that remains my goal, and days like today when the difficulty of cooking, making the bed, even getting dressed when you have to wheel from one place to another fill me with determination to reach that goal.

But then my days are so busy they get away from me, and I realize it’s nine o’clock and I haven’t exercised, and I’m too tired. Mind you, these are not strenuous exercises—some are done in my desk chair and some standing at a grab bar in the bathroom. But they are tedious. I need to put myself on a rigorous schedule where exercise comes first in the morning (my best time), followed by time spent on the work-in-progress until I reach my daily goal of a thousand words. Takes will power to do that.

On a bright note, I wrote about 500 words on the WIP today. Number four in the Blue Plate Mysteries. Some days I think it’s great; other days I wonder what fool wrote that drivel. Tentative title: “Murder at the Bus Depot.”