Free Range Human

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Poor J. His car is cursed for him, nothing but trouble. He thought the bearing was bad. Instead, it was most of the brakes. The battery died from lack of extended use. We jumped it and had it towed to repair. The cost was half what I thought it would be, about what J expected. He drove it home. It was fine for about thirty miles, then the next time out, it tried to lurch out into the highway and kill us both, engine racing.

We pulled over and he shut it off. When he restarted the car, it revved a bit, then was ok, so we were continuing to town. About twenty feet down the road, the check engine light came on. We turned for home. We bought some car vitamins to degunk the engine parts and he ran it daily and it began to respond, but the light remained on. Back to the repair shop next week. J checked everything he knows to check. We’ll see if it will be fixed this time.

Last night was crazy. I finished the dishes and went to fill our water filter system, when I saw something dangling there. The filter pitcher sits above the bins where we store bulk bags of rice. Oh, no. No. Moths. We immediately began to pull everything out and sure enough, they’d been in some beans J knew were tough, but couldn’t quite bring himself to toss. They’d also tried living in the bottom of the bin, among a few loose grains of rice. We then checked all our beans and open rice, hid what was open in the freezer. Oh, how I gag thinking about the cocoons, the worms.

J has always thought that bay leaves will magically keep pantry moths out of grains. How many times have we found this is not true? Yet, he still fills the bags and bins with leaves. I guess they are more like a magical talisman for him.

It is one of the consequences of eating the healthy diet we follow that we are plagued with the moths. When we see them flying around, we know to check our supplies. We haven’t lost much to them, but our cabinets and freezer are filled with rice and grains and spices–any of which can harbor or attract the little annoyances.

Then, the worst. J came over to turn on the computer and it wouldn’t respond. It refused to boot up. No amount of troubleshooting or disc insertion/intervention would save it. He was distraught. All his web page files were locked on that drive. All of his passwords encrypted through the system. We tried everything we knew. We went to town and he got a new internal hard drive and an external hard drive enclosure and prepared to invest days in trying to rescue his system.

When we arrived home, we had dinner and made time to attend to our practices, then he began to open up the system (after one last try pushing the button, just in case). He noticed right away that one bundle of wires leading to the hard drive was askew. He thought: Huh. He adjusted the wires and the system sprang to life, fully repaired and fine. Amazing. We couldn’t believe it. He kept waiting for another shoe to fall.

This was a small miracle in our lives. For relatively poor people, the hundreds we had to spend on parts alone was not welcome, but the prospect of having to invest in a whole new system was also possible.

Still, if this is how you earn your living, is your entertainment, your communication, you do what you have to (and hope it will help on your taxes). Compounding the problem was the time he would have lost trying to get back into his old drive so he could work on his web pages. He had saved work (for pay) that would have been lost. It was heartbreaking. But now, it is all fine.

He has important projects that weren’t fully backed up and which can’t really be consistently saved in that way. Still, he has known for some time now that he needed to figure out something, just in case. He has been comparing equipment and thinking it over. Until now. He is ready to heed to the warning and address it immediately. It always works out that if you don’t follow through, that the warning was your last chance. We’re listening.

He also credits sticking to the practice, even though we had a day of stress. It is said that the forces involved will test your determination. We carried on and like to think we were rewarded by the good things that happened immediately after.

While in town, we continued stocking up on flu basics, in case one or both of us becomes suddenly ill. We have citrus, Alka Seltzer, ginger, aspirin, canned soup and gentle soda. Also, large baggies for vomiting. We plan to set up the house at the first sign of illness.