Losing Cool

We now return to our regular topics.

Monday morning started off with a case of DDPMS. As I do most weekday mornings, I called up the stairs to make sure Daughter Dearest was moving. I heard a muffled response, and called back, “What?” She flung her door open, snarled, “I said I’m up!” and slammed the door. A few minutes later, she stormed into the kitchen and started in on me calling up the stairs instead of coming up: “people [by which she means her boyfriend] are trying to sleep!” I explained I was just trying to give her a little privacy, she snarled a justification, and I called her by her mom’s name. From her non-poker face, she looked both stung and peeved, but stuck a sock in it. Neither one of us said much on the way to school, which was fine with me. She’s showing signs of getting over herself, thankfully.

Speaking of the boyfriend, he’s starting a job at Home Despot. But unlike the lumber yard summer job I had between years of college, you don’t just start working. You have two days of orientation, some unspecified training time, tests… heck, it’s easier getting a job in hi-tech and the pay’s better. The orientation isn’t a simple matter of watching a dull video at the store you’re working at… no, they have to have this idiotic idea of “centralized orientation,” which involves driving to a Home Depot located in the middle of some of the worst suburban Atlanta rush hour traffic. To top it off, it starts at 8 a.m. and they warn you that being late means getting shut out of the orientation until they do it again next month! All this for a crappy retail job? GMAFB.

Since I used to work in that area, back before traffic got impossible, I volunteered to drive him down there. After all, I knew the back ways. We left at 6:30 and barely got there at 8 — in fact, we got there at 8:03 but they were either bluffing about the lockout or their clocks were slow. He hooked up with some people who will be working at the same store as him, and they’re carpooling tomorrow. But on the way down, I got a familiar whiff of antifreeze — which did nothing to improve my mood, seeing as the Civic has a new radiator complements of The Boy’s mishap last fall. But the car wasn’t overheating, so I got to work and reminded myself to look at it more closely at lunch.

A quick trip to Subway, and this time I saw a trickle of antifreeze running out from under the car. I popped the hood, and saw it was leaking from the same hose I tightened a while back. It was still tight, but definitely dripping. I called Mrs. Fetched and told her I’d need her to come down to pick up the boyfriend and take me to an auto parts store for a new radiator hose. Traffic was terrible on the way to Home Depot, and we were stuck in front of a Pep Boys — 10 minutes and $10 later, I had a new hose and we continued the crawl. Although it was night when we got back to the Civic, the hose was right on top and took all of two minutes to replace (it was cracked underneath). It took longer to go into the office and get some water to replace what had leaked.

One overheating problem takes care of itself after a week, the other is a simple repair involving only a screwdriver. If only all of life’s problems were that easy to fix.