Rant – Part IV

Sunday afternoon a little after 3:00 p.m., I finally have N loaded in the car. W has already headed out in the massive rental truck. I drive away from our old neighborhood, get on the freeway, and N announces that he is hungry. Of course. I agree to go through a drive thru and get him something to eat on the road. I make the unforgivable sin of passing the first exit with a McDonald’s at it. There is barely any redemption for me even though two exits later (less than three miles) there is another McDonald’s at which we can purchase the holy grail of junk food – 6 Chicken McNuggets, fries, lots of ketchup, and root beer.

Once his tummy was full, and I put his favorite Keith Urban CD on, N fell fast asleep thanks to a late night at his friend’s house the night before. The rest of the drive was spent in peace, and after a few songs I switched from CD to NPR and happily listened to that for the rest of the trip. I tried to resist the urge, but could not, to scan the roadside for evidence of a crash by a rental truck. No wreckage was ever spotted, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally exited the interstate and headed into town. Perhaps W had made it safely hurtling down the road in a massive truck at speeds of 70 mph or more, unless you are a state trooper reading this in which case no one on this trip ever exceeded the posted speed limit of 65 at any time, really. I breathed an even bigger sigh of relief when I turned the corner onto our street and saw the truck parked at the curb. It didn’t even look any more banged up than when we got it. Whew!

It was now 6:30. I asked W if he wanted to have dinner first or start unloading the truck and have a late dinner. That’s when I learned that he had no intention of unloading on Sunday night but intended to do it on Monday before he returned the truck. Hmm, he intended to unload the truck all by himself while I was at work? This did not sound like a grand plan to me. No, he assured me he was going to find some local college boys to help him and wanted to know if I knew how he might find someone like that? Dumbfounded, I just stood in the driveway staring at him. I hadn’t a clue what to say. At which point he said let’s go to dinner, and we did. After we returned, we unloaded my car and the cooler from the truck, but that was it. I went to bed early. Going to bed early is my equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

Monday I awoke thrilled that I could go back to work, a place where relative calm and sanity reign. I went home at lunch to learn that while no unloading of the truck had taken place, W had spent the morning unsuccessfully trying to locate guys looking to earn a few bucks by unloading the truck. This would’ve been easy when we lived in northern CA. Where we lived there was a corner market where every morning immigrants of dubious legality queued up waiting for someone to drive by needing cheap labor. Apparently, here in Podunk, Midwest a similar corner doesn’t exist, or we just don’t know its location. I returned to work for the afternoon with W’s assurances that even though we would have to keep the truck for an extra day until Tuesday he would start unloading it himself that very afternoon. Did I believe him? Sort of. I took that wait and see attitude, as in “I’ll believe this when I see it for myself.”

When I returned home from work that evening, some progress had indeed been made. The truck had been moved from the curb to the driveway. Oh it was still loaded, still locked tight as a matter of fact, but it was 30 feet closer to the house than it had been earlier. We were making progress.

Wish I could say the same for this story. Looks like we’re into this for Part V, which will hopefully be the last part though given my propensity for dragging out a story perhaps we’ll make it all the way to Part VI. Let’s hope not.