Journal: 05/20/06

It’s another warm and soggy day, very unlike Monterey. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain and I anxiously await it, the cooling rain, because I’ve grown comfortable in weather that rarely breaks seventy degrees. For once though, today was a busy day. Winter season is morphing into summer season and more people will be walking through the doors. Less time to surf the Internet, but more activity makes the days shorter. I’m all for shorter days.

I do work tomorrow and that’s fine with me. Getting back on my normal Monday-off schedule means that I will have one day a week where I can make appointments to get things done that I can’t with only weekends off. It’s a seven-day stretch though and I’ll have earned this Monday’s downtime.

Bill Gets His Car Back

Bill got his car back today after about a year sitting in the shop. He said that he had mixed feelings about having it home, but that was before he parked it in front of his room. He spent the day happily washing it, taking a year’s worth of dirt and grime off it. He said that he got about half the job done and didn’t want to spend the money to take it into the car wash. For him, the return of the car is a big step forward in his life.

From the beginning, when we first moved to this particular motel and throughout all the moves within the motel, he, Joann and I all lost large amounts of our things. I tossed about half of my things just to get here, the things I hadn’t looked at for years but had been carting around anyway. Bill lost half of his clothes and other belongings when Joann and I moved into the new apartment and he into his new room, thanks to late-night thieves who prowled through our open-air storage outside our new abodes. Joann lost more than half of her things two years ago when we couldn’t afford to maintain her storage locker anymore, and the rest after she died and I "housecleaned" the apartment.

We may not be able to afford gas for the car, and I’m not sure how Bill managed all the money to get the car back on the road. There was insurance, new tags and paying the mechanic off, but he did manage to get it done.

The reason the car sat for so long at the shop was that shortly after Bill put the car in the garage in June of last year, he went into the hospital for six weeks. After he came back home, there was a problem finding the right part to fix such an elderly car. As that process unfolded, Bill went back into the hospital again in October for three more weeks. Each time Bill went into the hospital; the mechanic suspended the search for the right part because we didn’t know if Bill would be able to drive after he came home. Restarting the part search took time, and when a part was located, more time was needed to fix an electrical issue with the car.

Finally, the car is back home though. Bill is very happy that such an important possession in his life wasn’t lost and I can seriously understand that. He has adapted to taking buses around town and still plans to keep doing so, using the car only for longer trips or shopping where there is a large load that normally would have required a cab ride. We do have to keep the gas cost down; money could get a lot tighter in the coming months.

I look upon the return of Bill’s car as an asset in the short term. Having the car available allows me to get to Salinas and deal with Social Security in the space of a morning before I go to work. It will also facilitate my search for other income by providing transportation in a shorter timeframe than I would have had taking buses, if I need to meet people. The long-term will have to wait. It all depends on how much gas we can afford.