Suzy Says

Dear Winter,
How can I miss you when you won’t go away?
Love,
Suzy

It seems that I was overly optimistic about the arrival of spring and the departure of winter. Lilacs notwithstanding, the weather has been doing a pretty good imitation of winter. It was 38F outside and 46F inside this past weekend, and we had a strong storm with high winds and heavy rains which led to me having to get out of the car three times on my way to work the following day to remove fallen branches on the drive way and the Ridge. The air smelled like Christmas trees and the roads were covered with twigs and needles as if it were December. So last season!

Spring being a tease and having to drive (again or still) in winter weather conditions makes me at least grudgingly glad that I invested my last paycheck in four new tires, an alignment, and an oil change for Wednesday. Unfortunately for both me and my modest paycheck, Wednesday requires low profile, high price tires, something of which I was unaware when picking her out at the car pound in faraway Modesto.

I bought two new tires on my really excellent birthday two years ago, and amused the mechanics when I asked if I could just buy four regular tires instead. To their credit (and my debit), they explained with a straight face that those pesky laws of physics don’t allow for that, regular tires being too fat or too high to fit in Wednesday’s sleek wheel wells. I guess two years is about all you can expect of your tires when you persist in driving them on unpaved and semi-paved roads which are usually accessorized with the latest in potholes and suffering from unbenign neglect when it comes to repairs.

I realize this means I have so far bought tires twice for a car which is not yet paid off.

In other winter news, it appears that all the rain has been wreaking havoc on our well. I came home one day this week to discover that the water coming out of the tap was a little more colorful than I would have liked. I asked Mark about it, and he hadn’t noticed (though you’d think at least one of three girls he lives with would have). He investigated, and said that all the rain had flushed the surrounding red clay (the red earth of Tara!) into the well and we would have to wait for it to settle down, which did not really settle me down at all. Nor did his cheerful assertion that it’s “clean” dirt, being natural instead of man-made and (presumably) not toxic.

Fortunately, I still have bottled water left over from the winter supply, but I am hoping that Mark can put a filter on the pipe that leads from the storage tank to the houses on the property to decruddify it sooner rather than later.

A YEAR AGO: Rob unveils his masterpiece.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Things were beautiful in San Francisco.