Story of the Day 1/ 28/ 2013

It has been one of those days.
A long one of those days.
It started , yesterday.
No, it actually started the day before that.
Wait,what am I thinking, it started on January 23rd. Wednesday evening, January 23rd. I don't' know how I could be so confused as to when today's story started, but, as I said, it has been one heck of a long day.

On Wednesday, January 23rd, my husband came home and announced that his headlight was out.
He didn'H say that. he said his "head lamp" was out. The last person I knew who called it that was my grandfather. He died in 1973 at the age of 91. We think.
Okay, we are pretty sure that he was at least 91.
When he came to this country, he used his brother's visa.
My grandfather's mother, Fanny, was rather desperate to get out of Europe.
Her husband wasn't. He seemed to be rather okay with hanging around despite the pogroms.
But she wasn't.
So, Fanny put in for visas for each of her older sons. And when the one came for his younger brother, Fanny up and sent Eli off to America, with his uncle, who ( unlike her husband) also wanted to get out of Europe.
As a result, my grandfather appears to have been born 2 months before his next sibling......so, at the very least he was 91. But who is counting.
At any rate, my grandfather did have a couple of automobiles with headlamps.
Not his most famous one, though. That was his maroon Pierce Arrow with the beige fenders.
The car would not have gotten its picture in the newspaper just for being such a lovely combination of colors, especially since this was well before color photography. No, the car had its picture in the newspaper because of Virginia.
Virginia was a pony that my grandfather and his teenage son , Bud, bought for my father ( who was all of 4 or so) when they went to the fair.
It was a bit of an impulse purchase. They hadn't thought about how to get the pony home.
Fortunately, they were slim and trim and the three of them, Grandpa Eli, Bud, and my father in the middle ( this was well before carseats or even seat belts) shared the front, and Virginia rode home to Akron in style- with her head out one window of the back seat, and her tail out the other.
I am sure it was a "pleasant" surprise for my grandmother.
It - the car with the pony's head our one window and tail out the other, got its picture taken and put into the Akron Beacon Journal. One of those great moments of journalism.
At least, in our family.

At any rate, getting my husband's car a new headlamp is my responsibility.
There are two reasons for this.
The first is because my husband heads off to work in the dark and comes home in the dark, at least this time of year. During the summer, at least half the time it is still light when he gets home from work. But now is not the summer.
The other reason it is my job is because my husband is working during all of the hours that car repair places are open.

So, that was Wednesday evening.

Thursday morning, after dropping Sarah off at school, I headed over to one of the car repair places on Keystone.
I parked my car and waited.
And waited.
They were supposed to open at 7:00 AM, but someone must have overslept their alarm clock. Of course, they picked the day it was 5 degrees Fahrenheit. So, I spent about 20 minutes turning my husband's car on and off and on and off trying to keep from turning into a popsicle.

When the lights finally went on in the garage, I went over and knocked on the door, and waited.
Several minutes later, a guy came to the door and let me in.
The guy then took me into the office and pulled up on his computer which lightbulb fits which Honda program and decided he did have the bulb, but he wasn't sure they would be able to change it, because , apparently, in our Honda the grill has to be popped off to change the bulb.
And he wasn't' able to do that because he didn't have the tool, but he would take a look, anyway.

This seemed somewhat plausible, because the last time the bulb had gone out, my husband, who is very good at changing these things, couldn't do it himself, which is why I was dragging the car out to pay to have it done.

Well, the guy goes and monkeys with it and decided he can't change it, and then he closes the hood of the car.
And the light comes on.

He explains that it was probably loose, and I drive off, happy to have paid a big fat nothing to get this problem taken care of.

At 6:10 PM,my husband wasn't home yet, so , I get in his car to go draw.
Naked people.
Downtown.
And the headlamp doesn't turn on.

The next day is Friday.
My Fridays are busy. I go off to work, in the morning and then I rush home and desperately try to fix something edible for Shabbat and take a couple of swipes at the paper piles in the family room and on the kitchen table, and maybe brandish a broom at the more dusty areas of the house.
With my limited housekeeping skills, and with it getting dark early ( meaning that Shabbat starts early) there is no time to deal with a car repair.

Since the local places are mostly open on Saturday ( when we cannot do it ) and are closed on Sundays ( when we could), I found myself, today, taking my husand's car out to try to get the headlight taken care of.
Yes, the participle is dangling, but, at this point, so are a lot of other things.

I drove over to a car repair place that the first place said could pop the grill off.
A real car repair place, not just an oil and lube and bulb store.

And they didn't' have the bulb.

This guy explains that if I wanted it done, today, I could drive a little further down the road and buy the bulb at Auto-zone, and bring it back, and he could change it.
This sounded reasonable.

I drove down the road aways to Auto-zone.
They were busy.
There were at least three other people in line in front of me, so I waited.
The lady, a tall young black woman. Okay, everyone is young and tall compared to me, but anyway, was manning the register. When it was my turn, I told her what I wanted.
She came around the counter and walked down an aisle and got the bulb for me. She also pulled a small plastic envelope of bulb grease off a rack and told me I would also need that to change the bulb.
I told her, "Well, I am not able to change the bulb by myself, I am taking it somewhere."

She looked at me as if i had insulted the very nature of the Auto-zone experience.

"Joe can help you."

She rang up my purchases and then I waited about 10 minutes for Joe.
Joe was not as young and he might have been as tall, but it didn't seem as tall on a guy, and he was white. He also was named Joe- which is often a good sign, since that is the name of Lynne's husband.
Hey, take good signs when you can get them.

Joe told me it was very simple to change the bulb, except that you can't see what you are doing and you have to do it by feel.

I , however, don't. My feeling in my fingers is not great. One of the joys of having arthritis or carpal tunnel or a combo of the two.

He saw me cringe.

He took the bulb in his hand, and the bulb grease and walked me out to the car.
He asked me to pop the hood.
He pulled some white plastic thing forward,it was white, and plastic. I hope you are impressed with my descriptive abilities. It was also a lot smaller than a bread box.
Then he stuck the bulb in and told me to have a nice day.

Next time I need a full service station, I know where to go.