The Voice

I have never been able, when something happens in my life that changes my schedule, or is hard for me to figure out, or when I don't have enough money for something, to exorcise m's voice out of my head, or rather, his emails: "Your life is a series of crises.  Most people do not live like this." Continuous criticism is NOT the way to effect change with anyone or anything, ever...and sometimes doing a kind thing like actually helping someone is better than sitting on your perch groaning about them. 

At any rate, my VW's oil light started blinking yesterday and I took it to my trusty mechanic this morning. A repair he assured me would take little time turned into nine hours of work for the poor guy (it took a long time to figure out and is hard to explain, except it has to do with older VW's and the way they use oil, and sense oil pressure).  I ended up walking all around Santa Cruz and up to Thistle's school, a considerable distance and with no buses in that area at all.  Thistle and I stayed at afterschool care til it got cold and then tried to find a bus: no dice (the only ones in the area were the Davenport and Bonny Doon buses).  We ended up walking the considerable distance back down to Santa Cruz.  Thistle was an old trouper about it all and I showed her the two houses where I lived when I first came here, a big Victorian house and a little one.  When we got to the library, it was closed.  We stayed in Bookshop Santa Cruz and finally went to the car.  I ended up having to miss my writing group tonight because I simply got home too late: and I had a section of the Asha book for them to critique. I do appreciate greatly the mechanic's heroics through the years with my various cars.

Still, whenever anything goes wrong, that little email-arrow comes through despite efforts to silence it, and I do my best to brush it off, ignore it, and go on.  I have said things too that probably still hurt people, so it is a lesson to keep trying to watch what I say, and do.