Day 24

The Infirmary

A slight connectivity issue has prevented me from posting for the past three days, so I apologize in advance for the volume of this work over the next day or so.  My wife has graciously offered to be my surrogate as she has access to a WiFi connection during this period of communication darkness on my end.  This would be our last night in the hotel.  Our home away from home.  And not a moment too soon I might add.  As if the space was not small enough, spending day after day tending to sick youngsters had proven our little hotel to be a sarcophagus that I was pleased to be free of.  With my flock home from school, it was a relatively quiet day.  Heavily medicated down time would be the name of the game.

I watched the clock for my wife’s return.  She had mercy on my and called it an early day with the exception of an afternoon meeting that I was to play navigator for.  As you already know, there is no love lost between the Garmin and myself.  I prefer to navigate by my wits and experience.  I have hit the streets regularly in order to learn my way around.  My wife’s reliance on the Garmin shows her faith in mankind and a trust that I am not ready to give.  Shortly after her departure for her meeting, I received an urgent call.  The Garmin had failed her and could not acquire the address of her destination.  I quickly grabbed a map and would spend the next 20 minutes giving her a turn by turn tutorial of the streets of our fair city.  I am proud to say that only once was I forced to scream “recalculating”.

Unfortunately, my wife had plugged a location close to her desired location into her trusty Garmin and I spent that 20 minutes trying to convince my lovely wife that she married me, not the bitch on the GPS.  Who are you going to trust here?  Thankfully, she took my advice mere moments before I was ready to power down so to speak.  Fortunately, her meeting did not last long and soon she would be back at our hotel, ready to relieve me of my watch.

Upon her return, we realized that we had little time to accomplish a key task . . . purchasing a new TV.  I was saddened by the thought of this purchase, but I let her talk me into it anyway.  The children seemed to be feeling better, so we doped them up one last time for the evening and headed to the local equivalent of Best Buy to purchase a newer, albeit smaller version of the magnificent LCD that I had left in the States.  We decided it was best to take both vehicles to ensure we would have enough room for electronics and children.  That is where the evening ended up taking a turn for the worse.  See, my wife had taken my beloved 206 to the airport so that I would have use of the larger vehicle to cart the kids around while she was away and had in fact driven it to work a time or two as well.  I think she is trying to steal it from me.  That being said, we decided this evening that we would each drive our own cars.  Her in her techno-wonder Renault and me in my trusty 206.

It seems she had become accustomed to the 206 and it’s simplicity of uses, for we did not make it out of the parking garage without incident.  Apparently she was under the impression that her new fangled Jeston mobile would relieve its own emergency break.  By the way . . . it does not.  That proved to be a problem on the very steep exit out of the parking garage.  In a fit of squealing tires, stalls, too many to count and a bit of aggravated honking from the following vehicle (MINE . . . couldn’t let her get off that easy) she finally gave up and let myself and the vehicle behind me pass her by.  A very dangerous maneuver in a steep and winding parking garage I might add.  That being said, the more competent drivers made their way forward, but she was not yet done being a fly in the ointment.  Her automotive convulsions occurred right over the automatic sensor for the gate exiting the parking structure.  We were trapped.   Stuck between a steel gate and the sputtering tire burning fury that was my wife’s continued effort to get her spaceship in gear.  There was nothing left for us to do but to back down the ramp and around the corner to attempt to trigger the gate for a second time.

Fortunately for myself and the vehicle behind me that had made the same leap of faith, my wife figured out her parking break issue and we did not have to pass her backwards down the spiraling drive.  We were finally off and running.  Now, we had done a bit of price shopping earlier in the week and already had our desired device picked out.  This would be an in and out strike that would literally take a matter of minutes.  We went with a familiar face.  Not just a similar TV to mine back home, but the exact TV in a smaller package.  Not too small mind you . . . we are not savages.

With our package tucked safely (sort of) in my wife’s car, it was agreed that we would head directly to the new house to drop off the television after she had run through the Quick Burger (yuck) to get the youngest a “patty” as he refers to it.  By this time, both children had switched vehicles to ride with Dad.  I can only presume out of a sense of self-preservation given the terrifying ride they had experienced leaving the parking garage earlier in the evening.  Not wanting my wife to take a misquided step at the hands of her Garmin I agreed to lead our caravan over to the new house, so I parked behind the burger joint to await her return.  Her vehicle disappeared into the drive through lane and I waited, and waited, and waited.  Knowing that surely they could have inseminated the cow, birthed the calf and raised it to slaughter in the same amount of time, I through the old 206 in reverse and headed around the building to see what was what.  No sign of my wife.

I am generally not the type of person that is tied to technology and it is usually of no importance to me when I leave my cell phone at home.  That would not be the case tonight.  Thinking that my wife had not seen where I parked and assuming that she knew the plan was to head for the new house, I set out in an effort to catch up.  My blood pressure was already on the rise due to the miscommunication that I still believe to be upon my wife’s head.  It was however, through the roof when I pulled up to the house to discover that my wife was not there.  Surely she was lost. Surely she had taken a wrong turn at the hands of my arch nemesis (Garmin, for those of you who haven’t been following along).  Not wanting to leave just moments before her arrival, I decided to wait.  Regardless of all miscommunication, this was to be the rendezvous point and I would stick with the game plan.

It wasn’t long until I realized that I would be drawing my social security benefits before she would arrive.  Now with a stroke clearly pending, I headed back for the hotel, swearing that if I saw her car already parked there that it would be grounds for divorce.  Leaning heavily on the throttle of my souped up 206, I bombed through the darkened city streets teaching my children some new vocabulary words that they had not likely encountered in their schooling.  Pulling into the parking garage, there it sat . . . the Renault with the sticky parking break.  I knew it was her car from the bald tires she had worn from her early efforts at overriding the vehicles safety measures.  I was pissed and she knew it.  After some friendly words, we made nice and ate our now cold Quick Burger.  YUM.  With unsettled stomachs we headed for bed.  Big day tomorrow.  Moving Day.