? Woody Allen
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
~ Robert Burns
I should know these things. I played Lennie (from Of Mice and Men) a couple of times in college.
I had this week planned. Actually, I pretty much had this month planned.
After seven months of hard charging working, doing three shows, writing at night and generally still trying to remember where my family lived, I was looking forward to our week at the beach.
I still am. It’s just going to take me a little longer to get there.
Speaking of a little longer to get there, the interruption that I wrote about earlier this year is heading back to college in Kentucky this weekend. We’ve been working on getting him ready.
The other day he reminded me “the Jeep needs an inspection.” Not to worry I said, we’ll take care of it before you go.
We sought to do that on Tuesday. That was the plan anyway.
But it didn’t turn out that way. Tuesday morning I got the call saying the estimate for repairs to get the Jeep to pass inspection was somewhere in the $2,500 range.
Hold on, let me check the wallet.
Rummage, rummage, rummage.
Could you give me that number again?
Not to air all our dirty laundry about our current cash flow situation, and not to blame it, at least not all of it on Congress and the President (don’t get me wrong, they own their fair share), but let’s just say that repairing and/or replacing the Jeep three days before departure just isn’t happening.
So, two steps back and we regroup.
The end result is that, while it’s a definite inconvenience, he’ll begin the first few weeks of his senior year without a vehicle. He has friends with cars so he won’t be stranded. Still, there’s a certain amount of suckage there.
To facilitate this, on Friday I will drive him part of the way to Kentucky, then the remainder of the way on Saturday. I’ll unpack him, then turn around and drive back to Richmond.
In a not totally unrelated event, some 37 years ago when my parents first took me to Asbury College (now University where the subject of this post now attends), they unloaded me and my stuff in the dorm. My dad looked at his watch and said “that wasn’t a bad drive; we can make it home tonight.” And they left. I knew no one. So, at least I know the feeling.
My wife on the other hand will be taking care of some other family business. I’ll meet her and the 13-year-old on the Outer Banks after I repack the truck and finalize arrangements with the house/cat sitter.
That’s a lot of miles. And no, it’s not ideal. But it’s what we have to do. So, we do it.
Life is full of interruptions. Things don’t always turn out the way we planned.
After all, I was supposed to be rich and thin by now. It’s simply not enough to just be devastatingly handsome (don’t make me close the comments).
After he’s safely back in school and we’re safely tanned and rested, we’ll settle down to making Jeep repairs. By mid-semester, one way or the other, he’ll be mobile again.
That’s the plan anyway.
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